Using Every Last Bit

We all know that nice quality makeup is friggin' expensive. Here are some tips on using every last bit of it to stretch your dollar a bit further. I happen to be running out of my liquid foundation and powder right now at the same time. I've been using a crappy brush for about the last week or two to carefully scrape every last drop of my foundation out of the bottle. I kind of need a bent angle brush like this to get that curved part near the top.

You just swipe that across your face and blend in rather than use your fingers. Yes, I look dumb. But I seriously have kept from needing to get out a new bottle of foundation for almost 2 weeks and that's nothing to laugh at because at $10.49 a bottle, or $1342.72 a gallon,  it isn't cheap! ( yes, 1 gal = 128 fl oz and one bottle is 1 fl oz)

 Once it is all blended, it doesn't look as dumb:

Now powder is trickier because it gets all crammed into the corners. I've been tediously using my kabuki powder brush to get this out:







Here, I crushed up the remaining powder with the end of that same brush I used to get my liquid foundation out:

Once it's pretty pulverized, you can gently dab your normal kabuki/powder brush in and apply as usual.

See? Applies as normal.


Pro Tip: don't put your shirt on until you are done with your makeup. This keeps you from having powder on your shirt. Same goes for brushing your teeth.

And looks better in natural light.











You can keep doing that, gently dabbing til the pulverized powder is slowly all used. The only problem I find with that is sometimes the larger chunks get stuck in your powder brush and then fall out when you apply it to your face (if you don't tap it out before going to your face) and that is not using all the product! Remember, you are trying to get all the mileage you can out of your makeup.

And thusly, I present this "re-constitution" idea. Get out the highest percent rubbing alcohol you can find. The highest I can find is 91% at CVS. I'm sure Walgreens has it too but meh, whatever you want to do. Step 1 is to crush those pieces down super fine:

Then pour a little bit of alcohol in. Not too much to drown it, but enough to saturate it. To me, this looks like my cat's wet food.

Then mix that slurry really really well.  I'm using the end of that brush, but have used tweezers before.

The goal is to get it all in the middle so you can use your powder brush on it later. So scrape around the sides the best you can. Admittedly, tweezers are better at getting into the corners.

Now let it dry for 24 hours. Here it is after about 12 hours:

It'll crack, that's normal. It'll crack more the more alcohol you put into it.

This same alcohol technique can be used on powder eye shadows (more on that in another post)!



I'm sure you've melted your lipstick at some point, don't laugh at it. The same technique applies when you are running out of it too. You can get a ton more applications of lip stick if you are just willing to get out a brush to put it on. To be fair, too, it usually gives you a nicer lip line anyway to use an angled brush or just brush in general. No photos of this because I only really wear lipstick when I am going out to the bar and I don't have any application photos of that yet.

Well, I hoped this will encourage you all to get out your brushes and start scraping the last remains of your makeup out. You'll be surprised how many applications you'll get out of something you otherwise would have just tossed in the garbage can. I've been doing this for years now. Not just because it saves money, but sometimes you don't always have a back up waiting and you have no time to run to the store.