How To: Fix Broken Powder Makeup

We’ve all heard it before: that sickening *crack* when your makeup bag hits the floor and you know you’ve just lost a highlighter, a bronzer, or an eyeshadow kit. 

But let’s stay calm. 

During my several years as a YouTube-beauty-obsessed-weirdo, I have discovered a surefire way to fix ANY broken powder makeup. It works every time, and while your bronzer might not have that cute image of the sun imposed onto it anymore, it still functions just as well.

What You’ll Need:

• Broken Makeup
• Rubbing Alcohol
• A Q-Tip, Small Makeup Brush, etc.  
• Paper Towels; 1 to Work on and 1 to Press With. 

Here’s how: 

1. Make it Worse.  Powder makeup usually breaks up into a couple large pieces. Crush them up more! You can use a Q-tip, like I did, or the end of a smaller makeup brush. I wouldn’t recommend using your fingers, because the next couple of steps are going to get messy. I worked left to right on this bronzer, so you can see the texture you’re going for (on the left) versus how it broke originally (on the right). 

2. Add the Rubbing Alcohol. 

Less is more, here! You can see that I added just enough rubbing alcohol to make a little bit of a paste to begin with. Add a few drops at a time, mix it in, and add more if you need to. Your goal is to have all of the powder saturated, but no liquid sitting on the top. We’re going for moldable, not runny. The next picture, where my bronzer resembles a lovely chocolate mousse, was a pretty nice consistency. 

3. Smooth it Out. 

Using a paper towel (or a tissue, if the last paper towel on your roll is covering your work surface…), press gently on the entire compact. Very, very gently. The goal is to have one even surface underneath your paper towel, so that the makeup will dry evenly later. Keep patting the makeup with your paper towel until you’re satisfied with the level of smoothness.

4. Clean Up, and Let it Dry!  

Wipe around the edges of your container to clean off any crumbs/mess, and then put your newly-fixed makeup in a cool, dry place to set, without the lid on. Since I used a tissue, my bronzer has some ripples in it from when the tissue got too wet and tried to die on me, but I’m not particularly upset about it. Give the rubbing alcohol a full 24 hours, 48 if you can, to evaporate. After that, your makeup should be ready to use again. 

Did you try this out?  Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram

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