As there's nothing like needing to pack for a suddenly-impending three-month trip to whip the random-venture subset of my procrastination skillset (o yes) into shape, I present the sparkly, sparkly fruits of my last makeuppy project -- pressing all the Fyrinnae minis!
This is the first time I've repressed anything (yeah, yeah) and I'm indebted to two excellent tutorials in particular: Kristina's from Sasquatch Swatch and makeupalley's Pressing Minerals notepad. The real lightbulb moment was when I realised the process was very like making scones and therefore nothing to be scared of.
Since those tutes (and any googleable scones recipe) will tell you all you need to know, this post isn't strictly a pictorial so much as a 'here's what I did and it seemed to work fine', but hopefully it will be helpful to those newer to Fyrinnae (whose samples are much smaller now than they seem to have been a few years back) and to fellow non-US-residents without such easy access to commercial mixing mediums and tools.
TOOLS
Pure Glycerin and Surgical Spirit (90% pure alcohol) -- both to be found for under £2 near the first aid sections of Boots in the UK. (Sorry they're so grubby -- blackened Fyrs are tenacious.)
Pure Glycerin and Surgical Spirit (90% pure alcohol) -- both to be found for under £2 near the first aid sections of Boots in the UK. (Sorry they're so grubby -- blackened Fyrs are tenacious.)
- Kitchen towel / paper for pressing
- Glass pipette (for alcohol -- I used the top from an empty dropper bottle)
- Plastic pipette (for glycerin -- you can use glass too, I just had this lying around)
- Aluminium 26mm pan from ebay (opt for aluminium as tin can rust) and 10p piece for pressing
- Tin 15mm pan from Yaby (which I bought before reading about the rust thing...) and 5p piece for pressing (which is slightly too large, so I used my pinky finger for less-filled pans)
- Toothpicks for mixing (I found these much better than spatulas or whatnot for such small amounts)
- Labels!
- Pen!
- Fyrinnae minis!
- (not pictured) Ethanol fumes!
PROCESS
1. Drop a tiny bit of glycerin into a Fyrinnae mini (straight into the pot was fine as they don't fill it with as much sparkly as they used to :/). Start off slow because you can add but you can't take away. This is about the right amount for a sample of a regular Fyrinnae shade (halve it for an Arcane Magick sample).
2. With a toothpick, mix evenly to the consistency of breadcrumbs (think scones after rubbing the butter+flour together) or slightly clumpy wet sand. There may be a slight colour change depending on the finish / shade of eyeshadow, it's no big deal. (Minimal spillage entirely due to me giggling at Season 2 of Community whilst doing this, not because the pot was too small.)
3. Add alcohol a few drops at a time, mixing until the pigment starts pulling away from the pot in a solid 'dough'. Unlike the glycerine stage, it's no big deal if you accidentally add too much -- the alcohol's all going to evaporate off anyway; too much will just mean a longer drying time. This is a bit too much alcohol for a regular sample:
This is how it looks when it's just starting to pull away / form a dough ball. The ideal is to end up with a perfectly unified ball that's picked up all the pigment naturally leaving the pot entirely clean -- think baking again. And again, don't worry about the colour change at this stage.
4. Scoop out the mixture with your mixing toothpick and squidge it into your pan more or less evenly. If making duos or trios, it's helpful to have a mixture that's a little drier (has less alcohol) and (like playdoh) more manipulable. Some pots contain more than others so it's best not to have too rigid an idea of exactly which shades you want as a duo/trio -- they may not all fit into one pan. This probably isn't an OCD-tendencies-friendly activity anyway :P Check out those polluted boundaries!
5. Place a sheet of kitchen towel over the top and gently press until you can see a pan-sized circle of alcohol soaking through.
6. After a few passes, moving to a clean spot on the kitchen towel each time, when the paper stops picking up much alcohol with a gentle finger-press, you can start pressing more firmly with a coin on top; a 10p piece is just slightly smaller than a 26mm pan and works well.
Repeat until the paper stops picking up much alcohol even with a coin on top (from bottom left, the start of coin-pressing, to bottom right, the end, or, when I got bored.)
7. Pan! Ready to be labelled and then left alone to dry for 24-48 hours.
8. Bask in the glow of
...and with flash
10. Marvel at all the space you've saved! Hmm, the ex-pigment-drawer seems to be calling for a rainbow of coloured eyeliners.... hey, I don't make the rules.
