Oh boy, this is going to be a long one 🙂   Starting the New Year, we tend to set some goals and resolutions for ourselves for the upcoming months. It feels only natural while starting a new cycle, as we feel inspired to make New Year better than the previous one and make ourselves bloom in every imaginable way. In case some of you might be thinking of transitioning to cruelty free products, I wanted to share my advice and things I have learned along the way figuring out what are the cruelty free products, and what I feel comfortable using. First of all, please do not confuse cruelty free status with vegan status. Cruelty free means that the product has not been tested on animals in the process of its production. Vegan product means that the product doesn’t contain animal products like dairy, carmine, bees wax etc. This…

I have been playing with my makeup today (groundbreaking news, I know) and I have looked at my makeup inventory.  My shopping habits have not been the healthiest in the previous year (blame it on the pandemic if you will), so I have accumulated a number of items, which made my makeup collection a bit bigger than previous years. Ok, a lot bigger. I was actually quite happy with my existing makeup collection in 2019 and made most of my project panning goals set for 2020 (I will write more about my 2020 project pan some time in February). I was doing really well resisting the new products or old classics that I haven’t tried before – like essence satin touch blushes. Sometimes during the year, I was starting to feel like: “oh, it is just makeup, it is meant to be played with, it makes me happy, I would…

Today I wanted to tackle a topic of how I got into makeup and how I went cruelty free with my makeup collection. Generally, I have always been drawn to makeup and what make up can do for your facial features. I am pretty sure that my mom bought me my first mascara and an eyeliner one summer (back in the 90s), when I was about to start either 7th or 8th grade of elementary school (middle school in US terms). I am almost positive that the brand was Deborah (Italian brand that still exists to this day, if I am not mistaking) which was available in Croatia where I live. In fact, I remember the little store at the seaside town where we went to get it and being so excited about it. As a blonde kid, my eyelashes were very light, especially in the summer, so just wearing…

My name is Iva and welcome to my blog world. Ok, who starts a blog in 2021?! Isn’t that so 2005? Oh, well, I am a late bloomer and frankly you tube is too big of a pill for me to swallow right now. #iamachicken #maybesomeday #personalgrowthontheway Year 2020 has been a mixture of weird and challenging times, (oh, what an understatement!), so I wanted to make a place where I can write about the things that make me happy. We all just want to be in the moment, not worrying about the outside world, pandemic, earthquakes or anything that makes life scary. I envision this blog to be a place for me to share my love for cruelty free makeup, cruelty free skincare, project pans and my soap making hobby. Also, don’t be surprised by an occasional food recipe that I love to make and maybe a travel guide…