Pinterest Fail!

So you know how you see those posts on Pinterest that say you can magically fix a smashed powder compact with alcohol?

Hmmm.  Not so much.

Thank goodness the nice folks at City Color Cosmetics reached out to me on Instagram and emailed to let me know they were sending me replacements for the ones that arrived damaged, because I made kind of a mess trying to perform the magic fix that everyone on the internet seems to have mastered.

The steps seem easy.  You take your pan filled with shards of powder, smash it up so it is even more powdery, then add a few drops of alcohol to it.  You supposedly mix it into a paste and then press it back into the pan with a paper towel which absorbs the alcohol and leaves a beautiful pattern behind.

Like hell you do.

The steps are more like this - try desperately to scrape the tons of powder from every surface of the compact that's not the pan, succeeding only in getting blush everywhere in creation.  Realize that you have accidentally added bristles from the blush brush and a piece of cellophane from the wrapper to the powder while trying to return as much of it as possible to the pan.  When you fish these out, accidentally flick the powder in your eye for good measure. In smashing the powder up, you'll notice you've once again gotten blush all over the surface of the compact which will need to be wiped off for the thirtieth time.  When you add the alcohol, one drop makes a difference between "not the least bit paste-like" and "blush soup", but you won't reallize this until at least three more drops have been added.  Finally, pressing down with the paper towel onto the soup causes it to squish out of the pan entirely and the soupy blush is not your friend because it makes everything slippery and orange and you drop the whole damn thing in the sink causing another square pan of the quad to crack and your husband to be supremely concerned when he finds you sitting on the floor exasperated and nearly in tears.

So, my advice is unless you have paid boocoodles of money for whatever you are trying to repair, cut your losses and add it to a sifter jar.  They sell them super cheap at Sally Beauty and you can just pretend it's bareMinerals.

Before:

After:

Hrrrrm.  Still, they swatched super gorgeous because they're awesome.  I really love this company.

See?:

So pretty!