Depotting Lancome Holiday Edition Palette

As per my previous post, I got started with depotting recently and have become slightly obsessed =P After getting "experience" and feeling more confident about my depotting skills with the GWP Lancome palettes, I moved on to my more expensive stuff (albeit older).  This Lancome palette is from the 2010 or 2011 Holiday edition which I received as a gift.  This was waaaay harder to depot than the GWP palettes! Read on for my experience with this


You will notice from the photo up top and that I removed the inner plastic trap from the compact similar to the GWP palettes. However, this was much harder to do and took about 2 hours of prying.  The GWP palettes were made with much thinner and cheaper quality plastic (makes sense since they come free) that were glued together, whereas this palette is made from thick plastic that was melded together.   (refer to the grid marks in the photo). I basically ended up prying this out with a steak knife. See below

There was a lot of fiddling around with the knife before the plastic separated (sounded like something was breaking inside), so if you want to attempt this I recommend being EXTREMELY careful! The reason I used a steak knife was that the point was sharper. The photo doesn't show it well but the line/separation between the plastic and the compact was incredibly narrow, and made me almost wonder whether they were one piece. Alas it finally did come apart and I felt like superwoman :)  I then placed the plastic over an old cotton t-shirt over my flat iron to soften the glue that held the shadow pans to the plastic (this part was very similar to the GWP, but I used my flat iron this time as the plastic was quite thick and I didn't think the candle was gonna do it).

Photo above shows the shadows now popped out of the plastic. I left the blush (Aplum), which was already partially scraped out for a mixing powder experiment I was doing. I didn't care much for this blush because it was very very non-pigmented and would only show up in a caked-up/pastey/sickly way after multiple layers of application.  This shade was probably meant for a very fair skinned person, not a light skinned asian like me. Needless to say, it went into the garbage with the plastic.

And the joining of these eyeshadows with my new beloved Z-palette...behold... (they're in the top right next to the circular shadow pans)

I was super happy with the result and what I'm fitting into the Z-palette.  Yay for decluttering and not having to open multiple compacts and also for the ease for now being able to use these colors with the rest of my collection.  Me = happy

Have you tried to depot a sturdier/difficult compact or palette before? Share your experience with me!