Adventures in Pressing: Testing Eyeshadows Across Brands

When I started pressing a few of my eyeshadows, I wondered if there were going to be discrepancies in between brands and textures so I experimented with three brands and a few different textures. I then did swatches to see if any of the colors changed through pressing.

From left to right; Fyrinnae Sacred, Sugarpill Lumi, Fyrinnae Newcastle, Darling Girl Curious, and Sugarpill Goldilux. All of these had already been pressed and allowed to dry overnight. Sugarpill Goldilux looks quite different in the jar but that's only due to the lighting.

Sacred, Lumi, Newcastle, and Curious were done with 1/4 tsp of product, Goldilux was done with 1/2 tsp. My formula was 1 drop of TKB Trading's Press It Binder to 1/4 tsp of product, plus as much rubbing alcohol as needed to bind everything together. For Goldilux, since I had 1/2 tsp of product, I used two drops of Press It Binder. The eyeshadows didn't turn out fragile and especially powdery or hard; just bound together quite well while still maintaining softness. 

Here is the tutorial on how to press your own eyeshadows.

Fyrinnae Sacred: I tested using this shadow so I could have an especially shimmery, erring on metallic eyeshadow

Sugarpill Lumi: I tested using this shadow so I could see if the duochrome changed due to the pressing, also so I could test out a shimmery eyeshadow.

Fyrinnae Newcastle: I wanted to test a darker color in addition to one packed with lots of sparkle.

Darling Girl Curious: I wanted to test a more neutral color with some glitter in it.

Sugarpill Goldilux: I wanted to test an especially glittery and metallic eyeshadow. This had a finer, sparklier glitter than Darling Girl Curious.

All swatches were done over Coastal Scents Shadow Worx Matte Primer and taken under an Ottlite. The Pressed Eyeshadow swatches are on the left, the original loose eyeshadow swatches are on the right.

Fyrinnae Sacred and Sugarpill Lumi. I can't discern any differences in colors or pigmentation at all!

I know Lumi looks like it's got a much sparklier and brighter duochrome but that's only due to the angle, I tried to take this picture to show that there really isn't a difference in how strong the duochrome is.

Fyrinnae Newcastle, Darling Girl Curious, Sugarpill Goldilux. The pressed version is swatched on the left, the loose version swatched on the right.

Interestingly enough, the pressed version of Newcastle turned out better than the loose version. The based turned out more opaque and the sparkle is much more obvious. I found with Curious that the pink sparkle in it was a bit more prominent than in the loose version.

Goldilux was a little different from the rest. When I first tried it out after pressing it, I couldn't get a lot of payoff from the eyeshadow, I was mostly getting sparkle and I thought I had used too much binder. Turns out that some of the glitter had sort of floated to the top and when I initially was swatching it, I was picking up the top layer of glitter while leaving the eyeshadow on the bottom. I rubbed through the top layer and got excellent results after that!

I should say that I found the pressed version to be a little more yellow toned, a little less molten gold-like. I also found that it had a little bit less sparkle and glitter compared to the loose swatch. Here's a picture to show what I mean. If I had to choose, I'd just keep Goldilux loose because I adore the molten quality to the eyeshadow and the sparkle and glitter.

Overall, I think my results were quite good! For Sacred and Lumi (both very shimmery eyeshadows), I didn't notice a difference in color or pigmentation after pressing. With Newcastle (a shimmery dark eyeshadow with sparkle), I actually think pressing the eyeshadow made it apply a little more opaquely! With Curious (a shimmery neutral with lots of glitter) and Goldilux (a metallic with lots of finer glitter), I did notice a slight color change, more so with Goldilux. I would press Curious and keep Goldilux loose, mainly because I like the color of it loose versus it pressed.

I can't say though that all eyeshadows will behave the same way mine did in terms of color and payoff. I think it would be good to do test batches while keeping some of eyeshadow loose so you can compare the two and decide which is better.

I hope you enjoyed the last post and hopefully this one in the series. I have my step by step tutorial next and then my troubleshooting post after that. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them!