How to lighten the load of your make-up kit

After working as a hair and make-up artist for the past 17 years I’m starting to feel the strain of carrying around a heavy kit which consists of a make-up case and a large bag of hair products and tools. I’m always looking for ways to lighten up the load and make it more compact and easy to carry around. Below are some of my tips on how to compact everything down without taking everything out!

how to make a professional makeup kit
All of my cream products transferred into clear stacks.

You can buy clear empty stacks in most make-up shops such as Charles Fox and Screen Face, they usually come in sets of about three but you can join them together to make the stack size that you want.  Using a metal spatula scrape out all of your cream products and add them into each little pot, for products that you don’t use a lot of such as lipstick you can divide the pot into two, so you have half of each colour in one pot which will further compact the number of stacks down. My stacks consist of lipsticks, cream foundations, cream concealers, grease paints, aqua colours and some cream blushers. Underneath each pot add a little sticky label with the product name or number so you can identify it. This allows me to carry around lots of products without the bulky packaging and added weight, I can also see everything at a glance because the stacks are clear.

You can also buy large clear stacks (like the ones used above for creams) that you can put loose powder into but I don’t recommend transferring powders into stacks if your make-up kit is in a trolley case as they tend to shake themselves open from the vibration of being pulled along the pavement.

how to make your own makeup palettes
My eyeshadows and blushers transferred into palettes.

Find the lightest weight palettes and fill them with eyeshadow and blusher refills, if they don’t stick magnetically then just add some doubled sided sticky tape to the bottom. You can also pull out the tray that divides up the palettes into neat rows, this way you can fit in even more.

how to put together a makeup kit
My foundations transferred into plastic bottles.

Transfer all glass bottled foundations into plastic bottles. Carrying around large numbers of glass bottles is really going to start to weigh down your kit and is unnecessary. After transferring the foundation leave the glass bottles upside down to drain for a while then scrape out the last little bit.  Don’t forget to label them as you go.

I also cut open all products in tubes when they are finished (such as primers and foundations) and scrape out the remaining product, there is so much left inside that I don’t think I could ever throw out a tube without cutting it open first. I will then transfer the product into a small container such as an empty concealer pot.

As a make-up artist you tend to want to carry around everything just in case you might need it but over the years I’ve realised that it’s more practical to break your kit down instead.  I’ve got a general everyday kit, a creative kit and an airbrush kit which are extra bags of products that I will add in if a job calls for it.

Tina

www.hairmakeup.co.uk

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