Make-up Storage

I have seen countless nifty storage ideas on Pinterest and elsewhere for the gobs of make-up that we seem to invariably collect. I'd love to use lots of those ideas someday, but all too often they involve space and/or wall mounting that I just don't have the option for right now. And so, my current solution is to have it out on my dresser in as nice a fashion as I could come up with. Why my dresser? Because there is zero space in the bathroom for it, and it's one of the only large flat surfaces in the apartment not being utilized in some other way.

As you can see, a few other things have wiggled their way on there, namely jewelry and the alarm clock. The alarm clock lives there and not by the bed so that if I use it, I have to physically get out of bed in order to turn it off.

And now for a closer look, going from left to right:

These three things are actually new additions to the dresser. In the back is a little bucket with all of my combs and hair brush. It used to have cotton balls in it, but I found something better for those. In front of it are two pieces of a box that I'm using to hold all my lipsticks and chapsticks. I may re-do the outside so it goes better with everything else or eventually replace it with a different container. However, it's a big improvement over the bag they used to be in. It's much easier to look, see all my options, and then grab the one I want.

Next is all my tin can and glass votive storage. My e.l.f. brushes are in a tin can and my other random brushes/beauty tools are in a glass jar that used to have a candle in it. Eye liner and mascara each get their own can. I modified the tin cans by glueing clips from magazines/advertisements on them to make them fun and colorful. In the front are two cleaned out Bath and Body Works candles, one of which has bobby pins in it and the other which has yet to be repurposed. You can see I still have a card of pins chilling off to the side. Eventually those will all end up in the jar too.

These are some storage containers I got from the dollar store a long time ago. In the first big one is all my Clinique eye shadow, my e.l.f. cream shadows, and a couple random square shadows. In the back small container is all the rest of my eye shadows, mostly single color shadows from various brands. The front small container has all my blush and my body shimmer (goodness knows the last time I used that). In the other long container is all my foundation, loose powder, bronzer, and concealer. (My favorite blush from Physician's Formula somehow jumped over there apparently; I'll have to put him back later.)

This is the random not-really-make-up section. Mostly it's jewelry, the rest of which lives in the top drawer of the dresser with my underwear and bras. But there is also my owl box with all my fragrance in it. In the front are the two I wear most (Midnight Pomegranate and Dark Kiss from Bath and Body Works). I'm actually starting to get low on both. In the back is Calyx that I got from ELLE and Forever Red from Bath and Body Works. The Calyx I'll randomly wear, but it's not my favorite as it doesn't stick around all day. The Forever Red is the first real perfume I've actually enjoyed.

Finally, I have three old candle jars full of cotton goodness. In the back, two Yankee Candle jars filled with q-tips and cotton rounds and, in the front, an off brand jar full of cotton balls. Like I mentioned, the cotton balls used to be in the blue bucket, but we recently polished off another candle, so the cotton balls get to be in a nice glass container now too.













And that is the exciting, exciting world of the top of my dresser! Now I'm off to finish folding the four loads of laundry I did today- not so exciting.