A culinary solution to storing your makeup

Now although I say that this will be a post about storing your makeup, displaying it would probably be a more accurate description.

As you will have seen from my blog, I adore makeup and I think that many products are just too pretty to be hidden away. Whilst at university, I was moving house every year and my makeup was stuffed in an assortment of bags and boxes and it took a real battering. So when I found a more permanent residence, I decided to completely overhaul the way I stored it, aiming to make it both accessible and aesthetically pleasing.

The solution to my problem?

A cake stand.

Yes, you heard me correctly, the kind of stand that is more commonly used for the latest cupcake craze.

Cake stand = the perfect makeup storage solution!

I use a 2 tier cake stand and use it to store all the products that I use on a regular basis, and I find looking at it filled with makeup just as mouthwatering as if it was filled with cakes! The major benefit of the stand is that it creates much needed space on my rather cramped dressing table and all of my products are visible. There is a commonly quoted statistic that women wear 10% of their clothes 90% of the time, favouring those items that are most accessible and in view, I think the same is true of makeup. I use a much wider variety of products now I can see them than I did when I had them all hidden in makeup bags.

You can pick up fairly cheap cake stands allover, even at bootfairs of flea markets, but my favourite is Laura Ashley as they have some more ornate options. I also got some great pearl place mats from there which help stop the stand marking my dressing table.

My dressing table

For my other beauty items I use some decorative cream pots that are actually tooth brush holders from Asda to store lip pencils, eyeliners and makeup brushes. For cotton pads, I use a glass jar from Laura Ashley that looks more like a fancy cookie jar.

Toothbrush holders and cookie jars

The rest of my makeup and skincare I store in labelled boxes on a bookshelf or in my dressing table drawers. For the drawers, I use cutlery dividers to separate items.

Cutlery divider

I hope this post has given you some potential new ideas for storing makeup, don't let your gorgeous products get forgotten and gather dust in the bottom of an old makeup bag, show them the light of day!

One thing I wouldn't recommend though is having a cream dressing table, at least not without some kind of protective covering. I've only had mine a year and even though I use mats to protect it, it is now covered with an assortment of makeup stains that refuse to be removed!