What’s the biggest makeup mess you’ve made? Share your stories!
Spilling MAC pigments (it’s always been them, I don’t know why) — I’ve done it on several occasions. The worst was spilling a neon fuchsia shade on a placement (thankfully, not the carpet!) and the whole thing was ruined.
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My biggest mess was shaking a nail polish while I was using it so I didn’t have the lid screwed on and I shook too hard and it flew out of my hand and got on my couch and carpet!
By far the biggest mess was when I spilled a bottle of dark purple nail polish on our super thick/high cream colored carpet. Because it fell from pretty high up, it splattered on a pretty wide area. It makes me ache even remembering that. To this day, there’s still some discoloration in that area :(.
I’ve spilled and dropped nearly every powder Ie was when own, but the biggest mess I’ve made was when I decided to blend custom shadows out of old/cheap palettes that I don’t use. It involved breaking eyeshadows, digging them out, then scooping them into little containers. I didn’t even think to put down paper towels or anything. I had to aggressively pat my blanket til most of powder came off lol
I’ve had eyeshadow either break completely, or the lid crack & and the product scrapes against items in my makeup bag, leaving a huge mess. For some unexplainable reason, this seems to almost exclusively happen with black eyeshdows… Also, I have a LORAC felt-tip liner tht always leaks every time I use it; I hadn’t realized this the first few times I used it, and on a few occasions, I ended up with black liner all over my face.
Bare Minerals brown pigment left open on counter + cat….
I don’t think I need to finish….
Christine, the fuchsia shade spill sounds awful! Back before bareMinerals’ foundations had the twist close feature, I had a brand new one that I opened and the whole sifter gave way…upside down…onto the carpet. Luckily the foundation was beige and so was the rug it landed on!
Oh, that had to be today. On my face, no less. I tried a new face powder with the MAC Fix spray, and it all went straight into my pores. I saw pores where I’d never seen them before. I followed that questionable decision by adding tinted moisturizer. Yes, I knew it was wrong, and did it anyway. Yes, mud ensued.
This wasn’t a mess I made, but once I was at Sephora wearing a sweater with loose sleeves, and I reached back over a lipstick display to get a tube, and I ended up with five or six smears of lipstick on the sweater from the testers. I was so annoyed with myself. Fortunately it all washed out, but I had to roll up the sleeves so I didn’t look awful for the rest of the day.
I did that the last time I was at Sephora! Luckily, the lipsticks just striped my bare arm instead of clothing, but it was still one of those, “Did I really just do that?” moments! Glad your sweater came clean! 🙂
I spilled MAC Process Magenta pigment on myself. Thankfully, not too much (the majority is still in the jar) and I was wearing pajamas. But it was still it a bitch to clean up and it was a brand-new jar so I had a small heart attack! There was also one time I was trying to wash out some jars that had cream eyeshadow in them (for reusing) and ended up clogging the drain. That one was just stupid.
A tube of bright green glittery powder eyeshadow with an applicator, when I pulled it out half the powder poofed out all over me, the carpet and my chest of draws. Luckily my mum was in th next room and grabbed the hoover, most of it cleaned up uk.
I did, for a short while, look like a demented christmas fairy had sneezed on me.
LOL!!
Me too Christine! I’ve always wondered…those little pigment containers that MAC has are sooo bad at keeping the mess contained. Has anybody decanted them into another container? How did you do it? And what size container?
I found paint-by-numbers types of plastic pots at a dollar store that I use for small amounts of pigments. They are attached to each other in a strip. I just cut them all apart to use and keep refilling them when the pigment gets used up. This is how I keep pigments in my makeup bag that I take to the gym, and the full size jars stay home!! If I drop one then I’m not wasting too much. If I drop one at home, I’ll move heaven and earth to get the product picked up, but at the gym…NO WAY!! Don’t know who’s been walking on those floors!!
The sample pots that Sephora uses also work. They’re just a bit bigger.
That is so smart! Thanks for the tip. I’ll try something similar.
Once I dropped a red lipstick onto a white rug. It wasn’t too bad though, it’s not like the lipstick was smashed into the rug just dented the lipstick a little.
Rainbow glitter explosion, enough said.
I dropped my Nars compact powder foundation on a hotel room bathroom once, and it basically exploded, cracking into a bajillion pieces and powdery mess. I was doubly sad because it’s my favorite powder foundation!
I have spilled loose eye shadow on my clothes while trying to pack a suitcase. And twice on the carpet. It’s always the same color, thought – Bare Minerals Cha Cha. I don’t use it too often now because I’m afraid I will spill it again lol. I’ve always gotten mascara on my carpet. I think it’s safe to say that I shouldn’t have carpet haha.
Too numerous to count.. m/(>.<)\m In this household, we're a pair of klutzes and I blame it on both of us being very tall… everything has that much further to reach the floor. 😛
Same here, Pigments are the worst! I have depotted most of mine into pill boxes (the seven day ones) to eliminate mess and I have made it worse! SMH!
So it was my first adventure in depotting, and I spilling so much shadow on my bathroom counter and floor that it took forever to clean up! My bathroom looked like an exploded rainbow after I was done depotting everything! 🙂
The worst? When I was a kid (middle school) I knocked over a bottle of nail polish remover and it spilled all over a nice wooden side table. The wood was a dark stain, and the acetone stripped it right off.
My mother wouldn’t let me hear the end of it.
If I had known better, I wouldn’t have tried to dry it off with paper towels. It’s better to let the nail polish remover evaporate, which it will, leaving the pigments mostly in place. It won’t be invisible but it won’t leave a huge bleached spot either.
I can’t think of any significant messes I’ve made with makeup as an adult. That’s mostly luck, and I’ve probably jinxed myself now! Drops and spills are inevitable; the best you can do is to arrange your workspace to reduce the damage.
Dropped bottles of (expensive!!!) foundation (lancome and MUFE) on my bathroom floor. the grout in between the tiles are permanently stained since it’s almost impossible to clean. Not to mention that i’m still finding tiny shards of glass in the corners and crevices 6 months later.
The loose Bare Escentuals shadows always got turned upside downin my makeup bag when I took them on vacation, then got everywhere when I opened them. I don’t carry them anymore!
Dropping an eyeshadow palette on the bathroom floor. Trying to sweep it up resulted in eyeshadow mashed into the grout which turned into an epic cleaning job. Next time (and I’m clumsy enough to know there will be a next time) I’ll go straight for the vacuum!!
Accidentally spilling a teeny bit of nail polish on the kitchen table. Not that bad.
It’s a tie. I spilled white nail polish on my mom’s pink sheets. I have no idea why I thought it was a good idea to paint my nails while sitting in her bed in the first place. And then I was taking my polish off and spilled acetone on her leather chair. Leather cleaner and polish helped fade the discoloration but you can still see it if you are looking for it.
One morning, I pust some fixing cream on my hair. Well, I thought it was fixing cream … until I went out of the car to cross the office parking, and it was raining (I had no umbrella). A couple of hours later, I went to the toilets and saw … FOAM on my hair. Then I understood I used the conditioner instead of the fixing cream …
It’s always nail polish on the carpet, which I’ve done several times! A close second would be broken eyeshadow in my purse, which then coated every single thing in there.
Well any one who uses an airbrush knows that cleaning the gun is a very messy experience! Also opening a post box from sephora with a glitter spray, that had broken in shipment, and opening it in my car…. my car was glitter fab for a month!
Both of mine involve weddings and rushing!
Most recently I was rushing to a taxi while trying to close my clutch bag, and my MAC compact fell out, landing on the road UNDER the car! It was raining and I got wet trying to rescue it, but when I opened the compact the broken powder poofed out all over my dark dress and clung to the wet bits. I spent the whole journey trying to clean it up.
The worst, though, was when I was going to a wedding and rushing to get ready. I dropped a bottle of nail polish on my bed and didn’t realise it had all spilled out until after I’d sat on it 🙁
I dropped my Zpallete once, and when I was trying to catch it, managed to hit it while it was upside down. Approximately 6.8 million shadows went EVERYWHERE. I don’t think I could do it again if I tried.
It was pretty much the worst day of my makeup life!
I dropped Chanel Allegoria nail laquer all over my bathroom tile and it shattered. What a mess! I was so mad at myself for that one. I also managed to crack a Maybelline foundation in my makeup bag and drench all my other makeup.
I spilled a bit of red nail polish on a light brown couch once. It came out a little, but not all the way
I knocked a full bottle of black NYC nailpolish off of my dresser onto my bedroom floor when I was 14… the carpet was light grey. Amazingly it still is! My Dad basically soaked the carpet in paint thinner and it lifted right out!
As I was standing over my make up vanity recently, I was shaking up my bottle of MUFE F&B when it slipped from my hands and fell into my sink. While the bottle itself didn’t break, the neck of the bottle did and foundation flew all over the surrounding areas – the mirror, counter, sink, walls, and carpet. I was able to clean up all of the product without it staining anything, except for one of my walls which now has a huge brown stain on it (nothing a little paint can’t fix). I think what bothered me the most was that I wasn’t able to salvage any of the product because the bottle landed in the sink up-side down. So, I no longer own my holy grail foundation! -__-
Picking up a bright green nail polish off my nail polish rack, taking it over to my NEW white couch and shaking it. I didn’t know the lid was not screwed on well and it flew out of my hand and the bottle shattered when it hit the wall behind me. Green nail polish on the wall, carpet, side table, lamp shade and of course my white couch. I think I stood there stunned for a good five minutes…maybe 10. I think I cried, too. LOL
Black kohl eyeliner pencil floating around loose in my gigantic purse….hot sunny day…hot black purse sitting on seat in the sun….top came off the pencil…black gooey gunk stuck on everything in my purse. Impossible to get it all off. Amazing how that kohl pencil never stuck to my eyelids for long but managed to attach itself to my purse contents with amazing tenacity.
Broke a bottle of nail polish in my car, turquoise polish all over my black leather passenger seat.
Back when I was 18 and really into going to music festivals, I always made a mess out of cosmetic grade glitter and NYX pigments. My boyfriend was never pleased with the outcome of the bathroom once I was done with my makeup, lol.