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What was the worst makeup accident/mishap you've had?


What was the worst makeup accident/mishap you’ve had? (Applying the wrong product to the wrong place, dropping/destroying something in a hurry…) Share!

A couple of weeks ago, I used a foundation I hadn’t used in awhile, and when I did one pump, it spewed halfway across the room and got all over the walls!

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Dylan Avatar

lol… this is perfect for me. i’ve dumped a whole tub of loose powder on the counter, dropped pressed powders and smashed them. the worst was when i decided that id load up my blush brush to not have to build it up the blush on my cheeks to save time… looked like a clown…

Safyre Avatar

I’m still upset about how I dropped my MAC Marine Life highlighting powder and today… I go to pump my skin79 BB cream and the bottle just falls into itself (it’s a vacuum pump so the pump part fell into the bottle part… if that makes sense) like it scared the ish out of me… but I think it’s because there was no product left but there was literally NO WARNING as to the fact that there wasn’t much product left. :I

Sabrina Avatar

I have a limited edition mac eyeshadow from the Chenman collection in the shade super sweet I was so in love with it, it has such a nice design to it. A few months later I dropped it but it broke weird, it was like a layer off the top came off, so it was in two pieces. I still use it broken or not I just don’t take it out of the house..

Nekona Avatar

Definitely when I had my Zoya Opal top coat on the sink and my dear Furbaby ran across, knocking it over. There is still lovely green sparkle topcoat on the wall, on the litter box mat, and on some of the cabinets. I’m not looking forward to fixing it before we move. :/

I tried to get as much as possible while it was wet, but it just did not want to come off and the nail polish remover just strips paint/wood stain.

Amanda Avatar

My little doggie once welcomed me home by jumping from my couch onto the coffee table, knocking over a raspberry pink nail polish with her tail in the process. It went flying and shattered all over my white tile! I was extra sad because it was a special LE OPI color that I just loved and couldn’t replace.

alie Avatar

i had to get nail polish out of a white wall once….so i wouldnt lose security deposit money. i ended up sanding it off very very gently with a nail file, then using white out on the sanded spots. no one noticed……

Veronica Avatar

My friend was curling my hair, and when she reached over to plug it in, she knocked the entire bottle of my MAC Mineralize foundation on the floor, where it completely shattered. It went EVERYWHERE. I’m sure the hotel room still has minor stains in the wallpapers from where we couldn’t get it to completely scrub off. I’d hate to think what it would have looked like if I had a skintone darker than an NC15. 😛

Daniela Avatar

I’m always trying to find solutions for make up NOT irritating/getting into my contacts. So today, I decided to put my contacts on AFTER I applied my make up. WORST decision EVER!!! For some reason my eyes got really irritated & red & watery so me trying to avoid any tears with a cotton from falling down my face turned into a nightmare! Nothing but black tears was dripping down the inner AND middle of my eye. Long story short, I had to redo my foundation, eyeliner, mascara & touch up on my shadow all while already being 20 minutes late.

Erica Avatar

My sister and I went into (and promptly left) a Bare Minerals boutique in Northern Cal after having a few too many martinis at lunch. She dropped a container of Onyx eye liner powder all over the floor and one of their carousels. I have never ever wondered again just how much product is in those little tubs. It was humiliating and hilarious all at the same time. Funny…the employees didn’t seem too upset…it was almost as if they had seen that same thing happen before!!!

Sunny Avatar

Gaaaah that must have been maddening!!!

I’m going to knock on wood, but finding micro-glitter underneath my eyes, having my undereye concealer disappear on me, or some eyeliner smudging are about the worst makeup accidents I’ve had so far.

Therese Avatar

Could that be Guerlain Tenke Timeproof..I have to be careful with that one every time even with new bottle! Never had an issue with parure lumiere or parure gold thou..

Kath Avatar

Well I can’t remember which is the worst because I’m kind of a klutz to be honest, but the latest horrific mishap I had was dropping my bottle of Orly Sec N’ Dry in a hurry to go down the stairs and breaking the bottle and spilling the contents over the tiles. Now our tiles for the stairs aren’t the glossy kind, they have a rough wooden texture, so it kind of absorbed the quick dry polish. Until now we can’t get it off, and I am afraid to use acetone on it because it might discolor the tiles.

Not exactly makeup but still beauty-related, hehe.

zainab Avatar

My son got ahold of a bottle or red nail polish and spilled it all over my favorite bed sheets. I tried getting it out with acetone, which slightly melted my washing machine’s lid. Needless to say I wasn’t particularly happy.

Kiss & Make-up Avatar

Just yesterday I dropped my brand new Clinique nail polish that I had only worn ONCE before on the kitchen floor 🙁 I was rrreally bummed out about losing my gorgeous nude (it was the shade Pajama Party) but also pretty freaked out when I saw the horror story unraveling on the floor tiles. The boyfriend and I had to work fast and hard to get rid of all that stubborn nail polish…

Kajsa Avatar

I knocked my Urban decay Vice 2 palette to the floor the week after I got it. The mirror shattered and I got glass all over the shadows… Had to unhinge the lid to get all of the mirror bits off, because they glued it in with that sticky rubbery kind of glue they use in magazines for samples and such.
Then I cleaned off the palette as good as I could from all the sharp glass bits. I still use the palette and hasn’t gotten any blood from it yet 😀
Not sure HOW the mirror broke but all of the shadows held up without any harm…

Jade Avatar

Years ago, a friend borrowed a loose eyeshadow and put it back in my makeup bag. When I went to get it the next day, she hadn’t screwed the lid on properly. Purple-y blue nightmare lol. And only recently, I dropped a glass foundation bottle on tiles at my in-laws (newly renovated!!) holiday house – I was more worried for the brand new tiles!! Thankfully I only superficially cracked the bottle and did NO damage to the tiles.

pePear Avatar

a month ago.I accidentally drop airbrush foundation(spray foundation) it not break or anything but when I used it.I have a foundtion all over my face&hair In fact it all over my upper body It just blow up LOL

Leonor Avatar

I tried a new mascara and went out to have drinks with two not so close friends who sat all night in front of me. When I got home I realized the mascara was all smudged under my eyes giving me serious panda look. Since how long? I don’t dare ask.

Lily Avatar

A few weeks ago Rowdy, my 7 month old yellow lab got to my Dior #618 Twill lipstick and had it all over his mouth. Had to replace the lipstick.

Zoe Avatar

I was doing my make up the other day and decided to use my benetint since I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used it. As I went to apply it I must’ve moved and the little bottle fell over and spilt all over mine (and my boyfriends!!!) sheets. A quick wash fixed it up, but still it wasn’t one of my finest moments!

Jennifer Avatar

I was going to London for a few days. It was just me and my friends sight seeing so I didn’t pack anything major makeup wise, just a couple of favorite products that I could apply with a finger.

So later, when my ENTIRE LUGGAGE WAS RIPPED APART AND SHREDDED, I had only lost my favorite products. So favorite that the labels had long since worn off.

So, by the way, if anyone knows of a twist-up eye shadow crayon in silver packaging available at Nordstrom around 2006ish that came in gorgeous duchrome blue/purple and green/gold I’m still trying to track them down or dupe it.

septhyneriadi Avatar

using ysl touche eclat as an undereye concealer on the day I get my ID picture taken. I look creppy with a weird white cast under my eye. Only then I learned that touche eclat is not meant to be a concealer.

Laurica Avatar

I don’t know if this counts, but I feel that buying ALL of the neutral palettes that came out over the last few years was a mishap. I fell into the trend of it all and now i have several palettes that look almost exactly the same. Have upwards of 20 bronze, brown & nude shadows is not necessary, especially when I don’t have any necessary primary colors such as yellow or green or blue.

Sara Avatar

I had an incident last summer where I was trying out a new foundation that I bought online from Stila. The formula was great and it applied fine, but my bedroom wasn’t very well lit. I realized when I got into my car and arrived at the outlet mall that I was ORANGE! The color was completely wrong for me and had me looking like a terrible fake tan. Plus I was stuck at the outlet mall looking like that for the next 2 hours…

Kristina Avatar

Around 6-7 years ago, when I was in college, I dropped an entire eyeshadow palette about 3 feet onto the carpet in my dorm room. It was full of 15 pans of limited edition, hard-to-find MAC pigments that had been gifted to me by a very special friend and that I had pressed myself. Every single one shattered and the palette landed face-down, so all the loose pigments went straight into the short, stiff, nubby carpet. I wasn’t able to recover ANY of it. Such a sad day!

Alysha Avatar

A friend of mine (and thankfully NOT me!) was putting lotion on her face after showering…only to realize about 30 minutes later after suffering from a weird burning feeling that she had put NAIR on her face and taken part of both of her eyebrows off. We were in 8th grade, so luckily it wasn’t like she had to go into work with partial eyebrows, but she did have to pencil part of them in for a few months.

Wednesday Avatar

I had a Bridget Jones moment this winter when I got up early to go for a hair appointment, it was dark and blizzardy and I drove through absolute hell to get to my appointment on time. My salon is an hour away from my digs. Anyhow, I plonk myself down in a chair, bleary-eyed from the journey and I gaze directly into a mirror right in front of me and see my blush is absolutely horrendous and terribly overdone: I basically look like a clown. My hairdresser and I laughed so hard.

Beware Estee Lauder Pur Colour blushes.. even the muted colours,.. they be pigmented!!!!

Carla Avatar

It’s actually been a while since I had a serious beauty accident, but I had a whopper when I was a 16-year-old high school sophomore.
One morning ( a school day, of COURSE), when I curled my eyelashes, I failed to notice that the pad had fallen out of the curler, and my lashes were lopped off, guillotine-style.
I wasn’t one to have false lashes on hand, so I put on a little extra mascara, and hoped nobody would notice.It didn’t help that I’d just started wearing contacts, after wearing glasses since third grade. There was nowhere to hide!
It was okay until fifth period, the next-to-last of the day.
I walked into Chemistry class, sat down in my usual place, and a girl who sat across from me took one look at me, and gasped, “CARLA! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYELASHES?”
She and my other lab partners, all girls, were very sympathetic when I explained what had happened, but they agreed that I should waste no time acquiring false lashes, which I did the minute school was out that day.
I bought some individual lashes, positioning a little cluster right over my “bald spot.”
That helped me look a little less strange, except when the false lashes 1) fell off or 2) flipped upside down, usually when I was in bright sunlight.
This was in the early ’80s; if lash serums were on the market, I was unaware of them.
But my lashes eventually grew back, and even now I’m still extra careful when curling my lashes. 🙂

Kari Avatar

i can’t recall any terrible makeup related incidents… but does getting hair dye on white walls count? lol i’ve done that so many times too and on the tile but thankfully that was easy to clean off. the walls not so much. i’ve got a big brown blob right under my full length mirror, another one on the OPPOSITE wall, and also two red stains by a closet doorknob and under my sink mirror. and my sink is kinda stained pink too. i can get most of it off if i wipe it away quickly and use a cleaning solution right after but these were ones i didn’t notice right away and set! oops.

also over the weekend i lost [well, more like misplaced…] a ysl lipstick. searching high and lo, it’s got to be in the house somewhere 🙁

Marcela P. Avatar

I work at SiJCP. I was taking a return of a sheer glow foundation by Nars, and it was almost full. I always have to check inside the box so I was trying to open it when the bottom “lid” of the box opened and BAM, bottle to the floor.. glass behind the counter, spilled foundation all over my favorite black boots and black pants….. everyone laughed so hard. Worse part, I had to continue ringing for another 5 minutes with foundation all over my pants and unable to clean it because we were all so busy. Needless to say my pants were ruined 🙁

Tessa Avatar

I was staying with a group of friends in an apartment in Manhattan Beach. It was my first time in LA and I was in love with everything, so I figured the best and most genius way to enjoy my morning was to do my makeup out on the balcony. I had my traincase set up on a garden ledge which happened to be right over top of the commons area. Thankfully I only brought about a quarter of my “holy grail” products, as I was only staying for four days, because not even 10 minutes into my makeup routine I elbowed my traincase and the *entire* thing went toppling over the edge of the balcony, falling three stories down, shattered to pieces and scattered all of my products around the common area. Every single thing either broke on the concrete or drowned in the swimming pool 🙁

Kayt Avatar

Two traumatizing moments come to mind:

1) My mom kept some vintage Avon “Dazzle Dust” iridescent powders from the 70’s and gave them to me when I was about 13. My first attempt applying, I dropped the little container all over the floor. Unsalvageable!

2) Grade 8 graduation, I decided that AFTER my dress was on, my hair and makeup done, it was a good time to put some scented hand cream on. I got a little overzealous with the hand-pump and squirted a huge line of cream all the way down my purple dress… tears, panic, and a makeup re-application, all was well.

Kate Avatar

This morning I went into the bathroom half asleep and I knocked a cup filled with my eyeliners and eye brushes into the toilet. I usually keep it on the other side of the bathroom but I had to move it to make space to wash and dry all my other brushes. I am not looking forward to dealing with it when I get home from work. I can wash my brushes but how do I de-germ all my eye pencils? Luckily it all fell in my toilet before using it and not after :-/

ShopCandie Avatar

Oh Katie, I don’t know! Is the possibility of pink eye worth it? Maybe there are good disinfecting instructions for pencils somewhere? What a bummer 🙁

Emilie Avatar

I only just bought Mac’s Creme Cup lipstick and on the day I wore it, I brought it in my purse with me. The cap somehow fell off and smashed part of the lipstick, which was a huge bummer… Luckily it’s a light color so it doesn’t require a TON of precision and it’s still completely usable. So glad I photographed it for my blog before it happened! Not as bad as some of the horror stories I’m seeing here, though…

issy Avatar

I too dropped a brand new bottle (glass) of Shiseido superexpensive toner from sink to floor and all got smashed. Didn’t even had one use of it.

On a more continuous note I wore a dark shade of foundation (50 when I am 20) for an entire year thinking that I needed it to give me some “colour” as I was studying and felt so pale.

The worst thing though was when I totally misread a “recipe” for face mask involving tumeric for a hair one and I put the yellow paste all over my looong brunette hair. Disastrous really!

AudreyNZ Avatar

Dropped a wound up lipstick onto the carpet…got covered in fluff 🙁 Fortunately, it was just a drugstore lipstick, nude colour which I don’t use much…didn’t like the smell/taste of it. It wasn’t intentional, honest! I manage to wipe the fluff off with a clean tissue…looks like it did not suffer any trauma 🙂

Amanda Avatar

I was so excited to get a mini tube of the original Glamglow mud mask from Sephora a few months ago. It wouldn’t come out so I squeezed hard… harder… too hard. Half the product suddenly shot out of the tube and got gritty mud all over my textured, painted bathroom walls. It was SO tough to clean. Now I know why the full size product is sold in a jar!

whitelace Avatar

A couple of months ago I decided to finally break down and treat myself to a Seche Vite top coat. I stopped in at my local Sally’s and also bought 4 nail polishes from promotions/new releases. Somehow when wrestling my keys at my car I dropped my Sally’s bag, breaking the Seche Vite. Let me tell you that glass bottle shatters like no other nail polish bottle. The Seche Vite got all over my new polishes and I had nothing to clean it up with. I couldn’t face returning to Sally’s that day to get another bottle or tell the story. I had to race home for damage control!

Deborah Avatar

Just one week ago I was on my way to a hair appointment. I used a very popular waterproof eye liner pencil. After driving only a few miles my contact lenses became so cloudy I could barely see to drive.
I went immediately to a drugstore and purchased some contact lens fluid – unbeknownst to me it was a mild contact lens cleaner with peroxide. I couldn’t read the package well enough to see the warnings. Yes, I ended up in the ER – all because of the ‘waterproof’ eye liner pencil and my obvious mistake. *sigh*

Rosie Avatar

I recently had a manicure during which I knocked 4 bottles of red nail varnish onto the floor. Cream tiled floor, so 3 of them broke. I was so apologetic, but bless them , the manicurists told me not yo worry, happens all the tome

kjh Avatar

As I tried to think of my doubtless many mishaps, the other posts reminded me of these two big bad blunders. In the first, we were in 7th grade. It was before the jfk assassination. Girls had to wear skirts or dresses. (this is public school, not catholic) If you were lucky, your mother let you wear stockings, rather than have to wear ankle socks. Thank God I lived too far away from these girls to be in their group. They made soap for a science project. You guessed it, too much lye or something. All four removed their eyebrows and still had to give the presentation in front of the class. The soap looked and smelled like a dupe for Camay, but sure didn’t act like it. I guess they all learned that the show must go on. I think they got a sympathy grade.

The other one was a teacher I knew well, who was highly accident prone prior to her marriage, anyway. Since then, I guess he has helped her keep out of trouble. She was babysitting for her sister, who I believe had two boys. Fixing the nail with superglue. (Admit it, you’ve all had a superglue mishap….I glued three fingers and the thumb together, for a semipermanent rude gesture) She glued two fingers to her sister’s solid mahogany dining room table, and shouted “Sean, get the razor blades!” Yes, EMTs, yes, ER, yes, stitches, yes fairly unsalvageable table..it wasn’t kept, anyway.

ShopCandie Avatar

When I applied liquid eyeliner for the first time I finished my right eye, and moved on to the left. My right eye started to sting terribly! It was FULL of eyeliner! The liner had soaked into the white of my eye and it was totally black! It stung for about 3 days after and turned me off of that particular brand forever!!

ShopCandie Avatar

When I was babysitting one time we decided to have a nail polish party. I dropped hot pink nail polish all over their living room rug! Not the five or the three year old…ME! So embarrassing!

alie Avatar

i managed once to break a giant sized bottle of chanel antaeus (yes, the long discontinued most amazing mens fragrance of my entire life) on my bathroom floor. RIP.
once i was working and someone stole my makeup bag. i had approx. $2500 of shit in there. now i try to carry only what i KNOW i will use for that outing. difficult since im a bartender in nyc and sometimes work 16 hour shifts. (also in that theft was a new bottle of adderall, which i am legit prescribed, and i had to file a police report in order for my dr to give me a new script. i think i may have honestly been more upset over my stolen mac, as i listed each item in detail to the policeman taking my report…. he was a bit confused.)
ive done the usual mortifying but not serious stuff too. like getting UDPP on my contacts. like accidentally applying a concealer as lipstick and not noticing bc i was drunk. i have melted my hair more than once, though not recently. i once went from butt-length black and pink hair to above the cheekbone melted sherbert color nonsense after seeing angelina jolie in “gone in 60 seconds” and using a 40 volume developer 3x in a row trying to bleach off faeria blue black. DO NOT DO THIS. i cried and cried and cried as i pulled my hair apart, which had become the consistency of melting plastic bags. it just kept pulling apart. (i was young. and i really thought i could do it in ONE NIGHT. no. no you cant.)
…my biggest sin of all?
allowing an ex boyfriend to convince me that my “attention whore” ways – aka, “girls that wear that much elaborate makeup need guys to look at them because they are lacking self esteem” – were something that i needed to change on his behalf. i threw out over $25,000 of makeup, most of it MAC and chanel from 1993-2006, because this A****** told me that i was using it to make up for a lack of self esteem. (and this wasnt even the worst thing he did to me. i should have taken my perfectly made up face, my thousands of dollars of makeup, and tossed him the bird as i left. cautionary tale – if a guy cant love that you love to experiment with your look, and you have TOO MUCH confidence for him? he ISNT WORTH IT!!!) he broke me down into a shell of myself and then broke up with me by coming home once, after 3 years, and telling me that another girl was moving in at the end of the month and that i should start packing. yup. what a winner.

Jodizzle Avatar

Just this morning I tried to ‘revive’ my Loreal gel eyeliner in the microwave. After just 12 seconds the glass container literally exploded and the gel had actual flames coming from it. Maybe I should have changed it to low power?

Lindsay Avatar

At my moms wedding I used a Avon glimmerstick in brown which my eyes happen to be very sensitive to and I was wearing contacts at the time I was at the ceremony and I started to notice the eyeliner smeared all over my contacts I couldn’t stop Blinking and it just kept getting worse so I just ended up just taking my contacts out and throwing them on the floor and I couldn’t see anything at my mothers wedding that was probably the worst make up disaster I’ve had! ever!

Dana Avatar

A parent had scheduled a conference immediately after school one afternoon. Returning to my classroom after walking the children to the bus line, the Mom and a Dad were waiting for me at the door. I had no time to primp after a long, hard relentless day with active third graders.

So I led Mom and Dad to the back conference table and we proceeded to discuss their child and review the data. I noticed a certain strange reaction on their faces, although the conference was friendly and informative. I wondered what was “off” about the exchange.

When we finished and the couple left, I was finally able to use the restroom. When I walked in, I nearly fell over at my reflection! My subtle makeup was a mess! I looked more like a clown in the Big Top than a third grade teacher. My goodness. So embarrassing! Those parents were looking at an absolute train wreck who had not had time to check her make-up for HOURS!

In the Florida heat and humidity, you have to clean up at intervals to protect your face from SLIDAGE!

whitelace Avatar

How I wish people would mention this, or simply hand over a kleenex! It’s worth the embarrassment. The other day — twice — the back of my skirt got tucked up. Gah!

Diane Avatar

Not makeup, per se, but back in the late 80s I bought a bottle of Calvin Klein’s Obsession (the stuff you dab, not the spray). I was going out for the night, so I just threw the bottle in my purse, intending to use it later. About an hour later, I could smell it, and it was STRONG. Turns out the cap came off while it was bumping around in my purse, and the entire bottle had emptied itself. Everything in my purse stunk like crazy, so I had to throw most of the contents out. I could smell it for weeks afterward. I used to love Obsession, but after that (and to this day), the smell of it would nauseate me. It was also a very expensive mistake (that stuff wasn’t cheap, and the bottle had been about 90% full). Live and learn, I guess. 🙂

Mallory Avatar

I accidentally dropped my makeup bag, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been but my MAC prolong wear concealer did break, the bottom broke off in a perfect circle which was strange….I had to depot it into a little pot…not the same…

whitelace Avatar

I was very excited to get a great deal at T.J. Maxx on a 3-pce. E.L.F. eye primer set. I kept meaning to haul it out after I finished another primer. Now I know it takes a long time to use up a primer. When I opened up the set, it had dried out. Bummer.

Stephanie Avatar

On Saturday I had planned on doing a mani/pedi at my parents’ house when we visited and had my daughter’s diaper bag and the bag of nail polish stuff on the kitchen table. I grabbed the diaper bag and knocked the nail polish bag over, which resulted in my brand new polish color (Sephora X Prism) shattering all over the linoleum.

Last weekend when I got the Sephora 2014 Sun Safety kit, I dropped the Bare Minerals pressed powder Mineral Veil on the floor. Naturally, the powder inside broke.

Pteetsa Avatar

A foundation I was trying to swatch at Sephora had a clogged nozzle. I just thought it might be getting empty and kept pumping it until it dislodged its clog in a violent foundation explosion all over me and my nice leather jacket. Huge mess! The salesgirl was nice and helped me clean up, but I was bummed about my jacket.

A long time ago, during a rare attempt at a self-manicure (nowadays I leave this to the professionals), I knocked a bottle of bright red polish all over my brother’s white carpet. I felt so bad! I cleaned it up as best I could, but it did leave a stain. Years later, he ripped up all the carpeting and put down wood floors. Whew!

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