A recent visit to the Square 2 outlet of Japan Home at Novena threw up a lovely find: a colourful set of pill boxes in trios – each trio for storing pills for morning, afternoon and night; seven of them for each day of the week! The visual effect is quite charming: rainbow receptacles to entice/remind you to pop those pills! :)
Although it was eye-catching, what really caught my breath was its price – made in Japan, this item from Yamada Kagaku costs only S$2.80. Not only is it very affordable, it is also well made, compact – the set measures 179 x 85 x 20 mm – and useful.
From a makeup point of view, the boxes are the perfect size for storing pigment samples. Instead of having pigment samples lying about in varying sizes of containers, why not store them in these pretty boxes? For that price, you can easily buy more than a few. Label them, stack them neatly and you’d be able to keep them all uniformly and neatly stored! If you prefer to store the trios loose for easier access, you could keep the clear box for storing other things…liners and brushes, perhaps? ;)
The lid of the plastic box in which the pill-box trios reside closes securely, as do the covers of the trios themselves. Do note that there is a sliver of space in between the individual compartments that might compromise pigment storage. As such, I wouldn’t recommend that you treat them as if they were air-tight. That said, I do not think your pigments will fall out all that easily (unless they are very light and powdery). You might be able to carry them around but do be careful.
If you simply want to store your samples in one place and do not intend to make use of these boxes as portable pigment containers, I believe they would be perfect for you!
I like the way the box is designed! But then cannot see the color of the pigment leh.
If you are partial to seeing the colours of your piggies (as I am with my MAC singles!), you could try looking for a clear/translucent version. I’m sure Daiso has some but I can’t remember the dimensions. :)
I came up with this idea a couple of years ago, but the powders drift and make a mess. I just recently took them out and put them in tiny ziplock baggies. There is no mess or drift and it is easy to see the colors.
I took all the floating powder and rebagged it as a mix by the tones, so none was lost.
I even did it with some of the jars that were a mess to use. I just hated to lose any on the counter, so I chose not to use them. I even had some that screwed into each other, the top to the bottom of another — what a mess to see or use. Out those jars went and into ziplocks.
It took an enormous amount of time, but I find I can use them easier and I reach for them more.
Hi karin, thank you for sharing! I understand what you mean about drift. I’m glad the Ziplocs work for you. :)
I had a few baggies of piggies in the past but found them to be messy as well; both in terms of storage, as well as usage. With pigments, a little mess is inevitable, I think.
The bags of the frostier piggies would stain too and opening and closing them was a pain. Jars are more for me, I think! ;) I found some at an art store that were really cool – they were square stackers and did not create as much of a mess as the round screw top ones BUT they weren’t as secure. :(
If only they made piggy containers similar to the eyeshadow/blush packaging of The Face Shop. The covers are perfectly flat and do not have to be secured on the edges, creating a jerk when opened (flyaway piggies!). However, I wonder if such packaging could be airtight.
Thankfully, I’m not a huge fan of piggies! :P
You sound really organised though (unlike me) and I wonder how you store those baggies. Do you have a system? Or some kind of filing storage?