I finally attempted to de-stick my Milk pencil into a little pot. I took some pics of the results, so here they are!
Here's the pencil after I melted out all the product. You can see it kinda got all over, lol. (The end looks all jagged because I'd tried to sharpen it... didn't work. >.<)
You can see through to the other side! :)
As you can see, my pot was a little bigger than was necessary. I don't know what size this particular jar is, but I think it's under 2.oz. After the amount I'd already used, plus loss of product from sharpening and melting, the rest only filled about half the container.
It's still creamy and easy to apply. I tried applying some to the back of my hand with my finger, and it went on like silk. ^^
Now I'll explain what I did:
First I used a tool to pull off the metal tip at the bottom of the pencil. (Pliers would work; I didn't have large enough ones, so I used some garden clippers, clasping it around the end of the metal thing, with the blade fitting in the groove between metal and pencil. Then I wiggled it until it came off.)
Then I tried standing the pencil point-down in the jar, which was inside a ceramic mug, to keep the pencil upright. I put it in the microwave for 30 seconds, just to see what would happen. I was paranoid about the jar melting since our microwave is pretty powerful. It didn't do anything at first, so I put it in for a bit longer, but the jar started sticking to the bottom of the mug, so I took them out. (By this time the mug was very hot!)
I then took everything to my bathroom to try the hairdryer method. I held the pencil point-down over the jar again. (The area around the pencil gets quite hot while pointing a dryer at it, so wearing a glove or holding the pencil with pliers or something would help keep your hand out of the heat.)
I'm not sure how long I held the dryer to the pencil, probably no more than 3 minutes. The dryer was set to hot temp on low, (it's an old dryer). At first the product just dripped tiny drips into the jar, getting on the sides and on my sink and hand as well! (Beware hot melted product!!) It was very liquidy and the air kind of blew it all over the place if I wasn't careful; thankfully I discovered how messy this was while using my white pencil on my white sink! Next time I'll put down some paper towels or something for easier clean up.
After a minute or two, there was still product inside the pencil, and I was beginning to wonder if it was all going to come out...
But I kept up the heat, and then all of a sudden, the rest of the product slid out in a tube-like shape. Yay, success! :D
I left the jar on my windowsill to cool for a few hours, and now I have a cute lil jar of product that I can use with my finger, a brush, a scoop, whatever. It's almost like having a whole new product! x3
I hope this was helpful to anyone who might be considering doing this to their NYX pencils. I'll eventually be doing the rest, though probably one or two at a time. Hopefully I'll develop a science for it so it will go faster and not be as messy, haha. Thanks for reading! :)
