we have an amazing story to share with you today from popmakeup!

in my final semester of my social work degree, i had the opportunity to travel to india to complete my final social work placement. as well as living and working in mumbai for three months, i had also planned a backpacking trip around the sub-continent. the first challenge i faced was packing everything i needed for the next four months into a backpack that would almost never leave my side. that meant i needed to make clever decisions about the makeup products i was going to take with me and finding multi-tasking products was key.

india is beautiful and devastating. there were times i felt utterly overwhelmed. as i travelled through india to mumbai, i was struck by the juxtaposition of beauty and joy and filth and desperation, which came to represent india for me. to be honest, there were weeks when i was lucky to have a shower, let alone think about makeup. but even still, one of the most enduring images from my time in india was the grace of a group of Indian women walking alongside the train tracks in the middle of the rajasthan desert. in their block-colour saris, they were jewels in the sand, and they held themselves accordingly.

as well as the lessons i learned about myself and the world, there were many small but important lessons i learned in India about beauty. one such lesson is what indian women taught me about makeup: that makeup doesn’t have to be so much about covering up your perceived flaws, but can instead be about emphasizing your unique beauty and expressing yourself in a world that does not always make it easy to have your voice heard. in my small makeup bag, i had everything i needed: 


-a wash of stila sheer color tinted moisturizer, a sheer tint to even out my skin tone
-a swish of concealer under my eyes 
-black mascara on my lashes
-stila convertible color in gerbera, a warm pink coloured cream on my cheeks and lips, topped with a generous dollop of stila lip glaze in grapefruit.

was i ever as glamorous as the indian women i saw every day? um... no.  did I feel confident enough to dance all night at a traditional indian wedding, spinning and laughing, open to everything that country had to offer? definitely.

courtney won yesterday's giveaway.  she said that a touch of fuschia convertible color makes her day! since today is friday, we thought we'd end the week on a high note!  our giveaway is spectacular and perhaps the most exciting among the 12.  enter now to win all six of these extremely popular, and sometimes hard to find travel palettes.