Urban Decay Primer Potion

If you wear eyeshadow at all, then you very likely have heard of the primer that’s pictured above. It provides amazing staying power and costs about $18/bottle at Sephora and wherever else sells it. I use it pretty much daily and purchased my first bottle about a year ago.

A couple weeks/months ago, I discovered that I seemed to be coming to the end of this little bottle. I even tried bending the very straight wand to see if I could get some more product, but alas, I finally gave in and bought a new bottle the last time I was in San Francisco.

Before opening that, however, I decided to see if the rumors were really true, that there was a ton of excess product in that tube that you couldn’t reach because of the stupid packaging. (Really, did they have to package according to the name? Primer potion is sometimes embarrassing to discuss with that last part tacked on).

1. First I went to my local Daiso Japan and bot a set of empty jars for $1.50

2. I grabbed a steak knife and sliced it open at the fattest part. The cardboard is thin here and it was pretty easy to cut through. I recommend unserrated over serrated edges because you'll get less of a mess.

3. Scrape out all the product, top and bottom, and you'll get a full jar. Can you believe how much I got out?

4. This is a 3 gram / milileter jar; roughly, that's 1/3 of the original bottle.

5. This is the kit from Daiso. I'm not sure if the Japanese imports store is available outside of California; it's not quite a dollar store, but it's definitely more awesome.