Makeup can be heavy and bulky to carry around in your bag for touchups. You can repurpose contact lens cases as makeup containers to hold small amounts of lipstick, eyeshadow powder and more.
The Advantage of Contact Lens Cases
The compacts and palettes that eye shadows come in can take up a lot of room in your purse, which is especially annoying if you don’t use every color in the box. Lipsticks also take up room, and if you want to carry several and keep your options open they can get heavy.
Contact lens cases are much smaller and lightweight. You can carry two lipsticks, for example, in one contact lens case with less weight and bulk than one typical lipstick tube.
And contact lens cases stay closed. They’re designed to hold saline solution, so they don’t let anything leak out. Unlike some makeup containers I’ve dealt with, ahem.
If you’re thinking you’ll need to carry makeup brushes with these, that’s not necessarily the case. But you could buy actually some mini travel brushes for your bag. A lip brush, maybe some eye shadow brushes.
They don’t add much weight or bulk to your bag. The trick is to carry as few of them as you need for each day.
But in a pinch, you can usually apply makeup pretty well with your fingers. Eye shadow powders often stay better for me when I apply them that way, because of the oil from my hands.
Lipsticks apply very well by hand, as do concealers and even foundation. Blush might be an exception, unless you use a cream blush.
How to Repurpose Contact Lens Cases for Makeup
It’s so easy to repurpose contact lens cases to carry your makeup. I’ve done this for years, with all sorts of makeup.
Lipsticks
Just scrape lipstick out of a tube with a toothpick and into the contact lens case. This is also a great way to mix your own colors of lipstick and keep them with you through the day for retouching.
Eye shadow
You can scrape a small amount of eye shadow off into a contact lens case. It will crumble, so I go ahead and crush it into powder form. Loose powder eye shadow is not hard to work with.
Except, of course, they’re easier to spill. Be careful whenever you open the lens case. As long as you close it tight, it will not let any powder out into your bag or pocket.
Foundation/Concealer
For liquid foundation or concealer, just pour a little bit into the lens case. You’ll probably be surprised how far it goes, so don’t pour too much at first.
For stick concealers and foundations, you can use the toothpick like I described with lipsticks. Gently scrape off the amount you need into the contact lens case.
It’s pretty obvious what to do with powder foundation or concealer – just pour in some powder and use it like usual. For this, you probably will need to carry a brush with you.
Blush
Powder blush works just like eye shadow. Scrape some of the powder off into the contact lens container. For these you’ll probably want carry a brush.
Cream blushes work like lipstick. Use a toothpick to scrape some product off into the contact lens container. You can probably apply this with your fingers.