Decluttering and Depotting: Too Faced Chocolate Bon Bons and Juvia's Place Masquerade

During my one week, one palette challenge, I used and thoroughly enjoyed the Too Faced Chocolate Bon Bons and Juvia's Place Masquerade palettes. I felt confident and happy keeping them in my collection. But as I have been really drawn to singles lately, I've been scrutinizing my palettes to really see if I love the entire thing or if I just love pieces of it. 

With both of these palettes, I realized I just love pieces. 

Typically when I've made the decision to declutter something, I just declutter and don't look back. If there is a "special" shade in a palette, I see if I can try to duplicate it in my collection or just buy the single shadow. 

I've mentioned before my love affair with Too Faced Satin Sheets. I've had it in three palettes, and I've decluttered all three. And every time I declutter, I think I won't miss Satin Sheets. I'll remind myself that I have a ton of shadows and I'll be fine. And each time, I miss Satin Sheets. And because Too Faced is, frankly, obnoxious and doesn't sell singles, there is no way that I could get this shadow outside of a palette.

Almond Truffle is also another favorite shadow of mine in this palette, and I know that if I didn't have it, I would sincerely miss it.

Those aren't the only two shadows I love in this palette, but they are certainly favorites of mine. And I suppose because there are a few other shadows that I love and then plenty of shadows that are totally fine, I decided I liked the palette enough to keep it.

But you know what? When I really looked at it, I love Sprinkles, Molasses Chip, and Cafe au Lait.

I like Cotton Candy, Totally Fetch, Bordeaux, Mocha, and Malted, but I have all those colors several times over.

I don't really care for Dark Truffle, Pecan Praline, Earl Grey, Divinity, and Black Currant. They are fine and totally workable, but they just aren't shadows that I'm really drawn to. And I hate Cashew Chew.

When I realized I really only wanted to keep five shadows, it seemed really dumb to keep this entire palette. I had some space open in a palette I depotted my Natasha Denona shadows into, so I thought maybe depotting would be the best option.

I couldn't find any tutorials for depotting Too Faced Chocolate Bar palettes, let alone the weirdo Chocolate Bon Bons, so I thought I would write how I depotted it.

So, first, you need to get a thin tool to wedge in the space between the brown part and the pink park. I worked the tool around the perimeter of the palette, making sure not to pry too hard as the shadows would break. I just went around, little by little, until the entire thing popped out. And guess what holds Chocolate Bar palettes in place?

Yep. Just three strips of tape. That's it, guys. 

So, now you have the shadows separated from the bulk of the packaging:

From here, I placed the shadows I wanted on top of the tiles of my hair straightener and waited until the plastic slightly melted. Then I took the same thin tool and lightly lifted the shadows from the palette. The glue was melted, so they just slid right out.

I then was able to pop the insert back into the packaging:

And here is my new, streamlined palette:

With the Juvia's Place Masquerade palette (mine is the mini), I really liked almost all the shadows. I mentioned in yesterday's post that the mattes aren't my favorite, but they are workable. And I really do think this is a great palette for someone who doesn't really have any eyeshadows at all. It gives you incredible color along with powerhouse neutrals. But for me and those of us who have a lot of neutrals, close to half of this palette is repetitive. 

So, I decided to depot the colors that I thought were most special and beautiful. Since these palettes are cardboard, the heat method doesn't work. Instead, I just pried them out and tried to be as careful as possible. 

I kept the top two rows as well as the third shadow in the third row. That shadow, along with the one above it, went into my custom palette with my other singles. I put the rest of the colors in a palette from Anastasia Beverly Hills, along with a single from Makeup Geek:

I only had one casualty, and that was Zobo. Half of it shattered, and I repressed it. As you can tell, I didn't cover the entire shadow in alcohol (likely a mistake), and after having several days to dry, I believe the shadow just looks like that now. It swatches beautifully, though, so I am hopeful that everything is okay. 

So, this process taught me a lot. First of all, it feels great to be one palette down and several shadows lighter. More importantly, I feel like this is the lesson of palettes. If you were to take a palette and only keep the shadows that you love, that are special, and that you want, my guess is that it would not be the entire palette. I really enjoyed using both of these palettes. I used every shade in both, and I was happy with how my eyeshadow turned out. But the shadows were largely just fine. They weren't crazy special or unique. They were just a part of the palette and acceptable, so why not? And those "meh" shades were really what drove me to pull the trigger on buying. Because had those "meh" shades been totally ugly, I likely would not have purchased the palette. But when I am choosing to spend money on a product, it should be a fantastic product all the way through. Or it should be something new and special all the way through. With the Masquerade palette, it is fantastic that half the shades are neutral, but for me, those weren't all that interesting because I have so many neutral shadows.

In the end, I don't think either of these palettes were a good purchase for me. And having to do it over again, after thinking more critically about my purchases, I would not have made either purchase. But, it's honestly a little hard for me to say that because there are shadows from both palettes that I completely love, and they are not available outside of these palettes. 

It's funny. When I was looking for a tutorial on how to depot Chocolate Bon Bons, I watched many depotting videos of other palettes. And in the comments, people were talking about how the video made them sick because their palettes are their babies and they could not imagine "destroying" them like that. And I am caught in between both ways of thinking. On the one hand, I do enjoy the presentation and uniformity of a palette, and it is just pleasing for me to look at. But on the other hand, depotting has been a fantastic way for me to downsize my collection while still holding on to pieces from palettes that I love. I like my makeup to look pretty, but I moreso want my makeup to be functional and used. And I can tell you that the depotted shadows from both palettes will be used a lot more now that they are free of their palettes. 

In the future, if I'm ever considering purchasing a palette again, I might ask myself, "If I were to depot this, which shadows would I keep?" And that would be keeping in mind colors that I already own and don't need to have duplicates of. And if the answer is not all or exceptionally close to all of the shadows, it should absolutely not be a palette that I purchase.