This is the DIY pretend makeup for toddlers that you have been looking for! It’s super easy to make for your little girl and costs you almost nothing! You can find the supplies you need, like foam paper, glitter, and more at the Dollar Tree!

(By clicking on a link and purchasing something, you support my business and me! I use affiliate links which means that I make a very small commission from purchases you make. It costs you nothing and helps me bring you great content!)

DIY Pretend Makeup for Toddlers

If I could count the number of times that I’ve tried to put on my makeup and my daughter has come rushing in, I’d be a rich mama! It’s like she can hear the tiny makeup cases opening from anywhere in the house! If you have had or have a two year old, they are stubborn little things! My daughter goes crazy when I take the makeup away from her. As I see it, I have two choices. I can take the makeup away and have her scream and cry and not get to put on my makeup or let her play with it. However, I’ve NEVER let her play with it for obvious reasons.

I finally reached a point where I needed her and wanted her to have her own pretend makeup for toddlers! She would get so happy when I would give her empty containers and old brushes of mine, that I wanted to see her sweet face light-up with her own play makeup! Looking for more DIY projects for your kids, check out my post, “DIY Cloud Costume” or “Clay Alphabet Magnets!”

My mom watches my daughter every so often for me and has run into the same issue with her makeup! She even gave my daughter a basket full of random empty containers, brushes, q-tips, etc. for her to play with! For Easter, my mom decided to get my daughter some pretend makeup. She found it on Amazon, and it’s an adorable little kit! Not only does the company, Pixie Crush, sell adorable pretend makeup for toddlers and kids of all ages, but they also donate a percentage of their proceeds to the LA Children’s Hospital! There are several different makeup kits you can buy in different price ranges.

Pretend Makeup Kit

It truly is the cutest makeup kit! However, when I saw it, I knew that I could make my own pretend makeup for toddlers! I did some quick research on Pinterest for DIY pretend makeup, but they all used nail polish to fill the empty makeup containers. I decided to try one container with nail polish. The smell was so strong that it lasted for two days. The container smelled like nail polish days later, and the nail polish never completely set properly. I decided to ditch it and come up with a new plan!

That’s when I remembered seeing different colored glitter hot glue sticks at the Dollar Tree, as well as, a bunch of other items that could be used to make pretend makeup for toddlers! I can’t wait to tell you how easy it is to make your own pretend make up!

How to DIY pretend makeup for toddlers or kids of any age:

Materials Needed (All available at the Dollar Tree!):

1. Old empty makeup palettes or buy new makeup palettes for a $1.00 at the Dollar Tree!
2. Glitter foam paper
3. Foam sheets in different colors
4. Glitter hot glue sticks & regular hot glue sticks
5. Glitter in your color of choice
6. Hot glue gun
7. Makeup brushes
8. Pen
9. Scissors
10. Toothpick (I used a large safety pin.)

Step 1:

Remove the metal piece that holds the powder in the compact. It is held down with a sticky glue, but will pop out easily. I’ve used a metal nail file, a safety pin, and a weird metal piece that we had lying around. You can pretty much use anything! Some people say to remove the powder instead of removing the whole metal piece, but if you remove the metal piece, you can trace it for an exact measurement of your pretend makeup.

Step 2:

Trace the metal piece that you removed onto the foam paper or glitter paper. This will give you the exact size of the makeup palette opening.

Step 3:

Cut out the shape of the item you traced and use hot glue to adhere it to the empty makeup palette. I love this foam paper from the Dollar Tree, because one side has texture and the other side does not. You can use either side for more variety!

Above is the eye shadow palette filled with foam paper and glitter paper. To adhere the foam paper I used hot glue. The glitter paper is peel and stick, but I put a little hot glue down as well. You probably don’t even need the hot glue, because the sticky dots are still left in the empty compartments from the real makeup. I wanted to be sure that it would stick, so I doubled up!

Step 4:

Since they did not have a ton of color options in the glitter paper at the Dollar Tree, I decided to get some glitter hot glue sticks to use for the eye shadow. I ended up using blue and silver, because everyone needs those colors to look their best! 😉

Next, I smoothed out the glitter hot glue using a safety pin. I also wanted to get all of the glue into the corners. You could use anything that could get into the tiny crevices.

I used this technique for the eye shadow palettes and the compact. In order to make the lipstick, I did something different. Here are the steps for the pretend lipstick:

1. First, remove real lipstick
2. Next, fill the stick part with hot glue
3. Then, fill the cap with your desired glitter color. You could also use the glitter glue, but they only had red and I wanted pink, so I had to use glitter and regular hot glue.
4. After that, fill the cap with a little bit of hot glue and mix the glue and glitter together. Repeat this process until you get to the top of the cap.
5. At that point, make sure the glue is still hot and place it on the applicator part of the lipstick. The cap will be glued on and will not be removable.

The brushes I found at the Dollar Tree are awesome because they are pink on the end, so my daughter thinks that there’s actually makeup coming off on them!

DIY Pretend Makeup for Toddlers

I saw these two adorable cases at the Dollar Tree! The clear one is a pencil case, but I knew my daughter would enjoy being able to see the makeup through the case, and it was a tad bigger than the one with the glitter stripe. I wanted to use my Cricut Explore Air 2 to label the case with her name. I love being able to make labels for anything with my Cricut. You can see some of the labels I’ve made in my post “Best Food Storage Containers & Labels.” If you don’t have a Cricut or cutting machine, you can always use stickers to label something or cut out letters from some sticky backed paper. That’s what I did for my kids “Easter Kids’ Table” and their “Easy Monogrammed Pumpkin Pails,” before I had my Cricut. Since they were each $1.00, I decided to buy both! I figured that she could have whichever one we don’t use as her makeup case as a purse.

I spent about $12 on all of the supplies, and we have extra stuff leftover for more craft projects! My daughter might be rocking the 80’s color palettes, but it’s right up her alley! I wish I had gotten her reaction on camera when she first saw her own pretend makeup for toddlers! She was ecstatic! It melted this mama’s heart. Not only does she love putting the makeup on, but she also loves taking it out of the case and putting it back in! What is it about putting things into things at this age!?

Buy one of these adorable pretend makeup kits if you aren’t into making one:

To join next month’s #pinterestchallenge, click here to sign-up ⇒ June Pinterest Challenge

Let’s meet this month’s Pinterest Challenge hosts!

My Pinterventures •  Cookies Coffee and Crafts
Sew Crafty Crochet •  Sum of their Stories  •  Eye Love Knots
This Autoimmune Life  •  Love My Little Cottage
Across the Boulevard •  Suzerspace •  Simple Nature Decor
Purple Hues and Me  • Decorate and More with Tip
Mom Home Guide •  Our Unschooling Journey
Intelligent Domestications •  Alayna’s Creations
Lydia’s Flexitarian Kitchen •  K’s Olympic Nest
Our Crafty Mom  •  Hello Central Avenue  •  Making Manzanita 

 Now, let’s see what the other hosts have created ⇓⇓

You’ll LOVE these posts below if you liked the one above: