The wild coast of Bohemia

Our brand new shop is now online. 


It's at the same url www.baba-store.com but you'll see all sorts of improvements. Just a few are:

- Many more products, and many more fashion photos to give a better idea of size and so on.

- All products priced in Euros but with the ability to switch instantly to US dollar or GB pounds.

- Better order tracking - something you've been asking for which we're delighted finally to have.

- Clearer reward points. Now every product shows its price in reward points and also how many points you get when you buy it.

- Better navigation - we now have a whole site map, an improved search engine and everything laid out so that the same products can be found easily in more than a single category (for example, Bohemian Gothic tarot bags are now in

- The ability to add reviews, make up a "wish list" and also email products to friends (all very useful for gift giving and gift hinting!)

- A straightforward way of buying and sending gift certificates.

The good news for existing customers is that we are moving all accounts and points from the old shop. This process is completed and most of you will find everything working as before. However, it's been a huge task so if you find that anything isn't working, please let us know. 

The only change is that you now need to log on using your email address, NOT a user name - we think it's easier. Apart from that you should mostly find that your old password works fine.</If it doesn't (moving these across is a little difficult as all passwords are encrypted) please just reset your password using your email address. In this new shop that's a very quick and easy process.

Oh- and for those of you who have points, we are moving those across (if you don't yet see yours, do let us know, we've currently moved about 90%). The good news is that as they are now counted in Euros, not Dollars, you'll find that any existing points that you had built up are now worth more. It's just a small &quot;thank-you&quot; from us for your patience during this exciting shop transition.
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By the way, sorry for such a formal announcement but it's the same one we are ATTEMPTING to mail out. But nowadays the chances of getting through mail filters etc are so small that I thought it should go here.

But it appeared about two weeks ago in the street that we live on (well, we live just at the top as it turns into another street).

Desire let me go? Maybe I should take it more seriously, as I doubt that I've ever lived without some desires, though not always of a material kind.

Don't miss this one:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7350000/newsid_7357300/7357322.stm?bw=nb&mp=rm&news=1&bbcws=1

By the way, sorry if this seems "sales-y". It's not supposed to be. (In fact, surprisingly for this time of the year we seem to be up to our ears with orders -almost as much so as we were before Christmas). But I am just SO absolutely pleased with the way these photos are coming out.

It's also a relief to see Simon - the photographer, more of him later - and Alex managing to produce three such great photo shoots. All with such different feels. From having very few photos I was really happy with I am now like a child in a sweet shop! Don't these look good on the Etsy shop?!

And I am having such fun putting them into the new shop - which is going to be splendiferous (can I use that word? Oh well, why not. I like its slightly silly quality) I think.




Link to the Etsy shop listing.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11156282

By request - link to the Etsy shop listing.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11110513
We only have one of these bags right now (though we have Alice and the Cards in this colour also, and one Alice and the Caterpillar in an amazing blue/purple silk). We just made one of each for the photography, but we will make more asap.

These came out SO well.

I've been talking about us making an Elf Boy shoulder bag for many months. One of the good things about a photo-shoot is that it does get all these things done:

I ought to be in bed, but I just had to put this up. A quick picture from today's photoshoot. I LOVE the colours in this one:

Okay, he is going - well probably. We sort of have an unspoken rule that if one thing comes in to be kept, another has to be parted with. We do have a LOT of beautiful things now - I am a real accumulator, too much so really (it's too easy in Prague - though there aren't as many amazing things around as there used to be). Plus he is one of a pair. He came with a "Fu Man Chu" head, so I suppose they ought to go together ideally. They will find their place.

Anyway, this I just bought this wonderful old needlework (and it was a huge bargain, don't even ask!) and I am keeping it instead of Mr Pierrot - I have some ideas about it becoming part of a fantasy black and white interior - which of course will never happen, but is good to dream on. However, it will also be used to take scans from. I think it could be used in some stunning bags.

Win-win? I get to keep it entirely guilt-free. It's for work you see. :)
But in general, the only problem with my Cabinet of Curiosities idea is that I go looking for things - and go into mad acquisition mode. I need to control myself and get most of the finds on to the shop and STOP making excuses for them staying here. What did I say about Buddhist exercises?



Now I have to go and work out which myth this is and the proper name for a mer-lion.

Edited to add. Oh, he is a Leo-kampus apparently:
http://www.theoi.com/Ther/Hippokampoi.html

Edited again (and yes, I know I'm talking to myself here):
http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/Z33.4.html
He is a Sea-panther NOT a sea lion (silly me). It's Galateia riding a sea-panther. A somewhat unusual thing to do as a needlework I would have thought, but well, there it is.

Ah, hmm, she is the goddess of calm seas. So, it gets more and more interesting. Made by a sea-man's wife perhaps?

You see? This blog can be quite educational at times.

I came across this for sale:





I can't make up my mind if it's interestingly bizarre and mythological or just some piece of Victorian dodgy erotica.

I have a bit of "credit" as Alex agreed I could buy something to reward myself for the hard work on the shop (er, forget the Ghost tops and skirt, that was a, hmm, a different self reward) but what do you think? Would you be tempted by this or is it too like something you'd find growing dusty in a corner of the Malfoy's house?

I've been working on a new section for the new shop. It's called "Cabinet of Curiosities" and will have, well, things I like and find interesting, somewhat bizarre and - definitely - appealing.

So I've been buying specially. Problem -

WAIL!

I don't really want to part with what I'm buying. Oh drat oh drat.

Here's one example. A 1930s handmade papier mache puppet head - quite large (seller's photo, I haven't had time to photograph him yet).


Now, be honest, would YOU sell him? He is strange and very Weimar and sort of frightening but fascinating. I don't think I can bring myself not to keep him, but as Alex points out the "Cabinet" is going to be a little bare if I keep everything.
(and as for the 1930s green irridescent dance dress fabric - AAAARRRGH. Oh drat again).

I need to do some Buddhist unattachment exercises.

Oh- by the way, I've changed some of the permissions on my graphics. So I hope everyone can see this now. Please tell me!

I thought I'd put these up - just for interest. I'm always saying that we do a lot of work even on the imagery that we use from other artists. So here is Rackham's Alice (scanned from a turn of the last century book) before and after being cleaned and adjusted for fabric prints:






Arguably, I think we have sometimes overdone this in the past - in a way it's nice to leave a little of the "age" and fading showing.

This print will be used on shoulder bags, tarot bags and messengers (when we make side panels that fit). I'm pleased with this - it's an image I've loved for years.

After more than four months of looking at code like this:

_____________
{* $Id: select_currency.tpl 3746 2007-08-27 08:24:25Z zeke $ *}
{if $currencies && !$hide_currencies}

{if $settings.Addons.seo == 'Y'}
{assign var="qstring" value=$seo_url.page|fn_query_remove:'currency'|replace:'&':'&'}
{assign var="qaction" value="&sl='+this.value"}
{if !$qstring|strpos:'?'}{assign var="qstring" value="$qstring?"}{/if}
{else}
{assign var="qprefix" value="$index_script?"}
{assign var="qstring" value=$QUERY_STRING|fn_query_remove:'currency'|replace:'&':'&'}
{/if}

<select ... >
{foreach from=$currencies item=currency}
<option ... >{$currency.description} ({$currency.symbol})</option>
{/foreach}
</select>
{/if}

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and sending off pleading questions daily to the rather, er, well rather Russian support team at CS-Cart (what do I mean by rather Russian? Well, for starters they sometimes forget themselves and tell you you're an idiot. And you can see that they find it a real strain to use "please" and "thank-you" sufficiently for a Western-culture customer. Which reminds me of the redoubtable Vassilisa who once quietly asked Alex to have a word with me and ask me not to say "Please" every time I asked her to do something. "It's making me nervous, Alex," she explained.)...

...I am nearly there with the shop. I think. Unless I discover something else that needs changing. Now all we have to do is check every one of the 200 or so products (some with ten options and half a dozen pictures - OMG, what are we doing?) and do about a million test orders in various currencies. Then find out how to set up the "membership" for "Friends of Baba Studio" (okay, okay, but it's NICE) so that it only kicks in under certain criteria. Then make sure that the same happens for wholesale. Then try to prevent the inventory from insisting on believing that everything is sold out (not helpful, really not helpful).

I will say this - this is the most GORGEOUSLY well put together piece of code. I am not much of a coder - wild understatement - but I do love neat, clean, modular code when I see it.

However, the user-interface design leaves a little more to be desired, so mostly that's what I've been working on. How DO you explain to a Russian support team that not everyone will know that "None" in the currency box means that-you-have-not-chosen-an-alternative-option-so-will-get-the-default-currency-which-happens-in-this-case-to-be-Euro. As I said, er, Please (whoops) can we just say "Euro" instead of "None"? Call me whacky.

At moments like this I remember that my main profession over the years (with some other pretty odd ones thrown in along the way) was being a user-interface designer. Deep down, I am really enjoying setting up this shop. My precious.

I'm running off to shop - and yes, it is 9.45 on a Sunday night but well, needs must as we've run out of cat food.

But here is just a very quick one - the "Strength" bag with a plethora of lions. I think this is our best selling bag - or maybe it's neck-and-neck with Alice.

Oh, by the way, the jacket is an original 19th century one in perfect condition. It's designed to be worn over a bustle - utterly wonderful and all hand stitched (and if you madly want to buy it tell me quickly and I'll ask the selling price as on Tuesday it will go back to the shop we borrowed it from - I WISH I could find an excuse to buy it myself):

This was the little guy who also took part in the photography session. Completely unafraid - I suppose he's used to people.

This photo is by Alex. Modelled by Aida, hair and make-up by Eva (whose surname I need to find and post - eek) Eva is now about to begin work for Mac in Prague, so if you get a chance to go to the Mac shop ask her to do a make-over for you, she's fantastic and LOADS of fun - and speaks perfect English as she lived in England for years.


Aida looks beautiful in these photos - I hope the bags do too!
This photo is by Alex. Soon I'll post the images by the photographer we've been working with - Simon Chang.

A nice day of wondering less about theory (though be warned, I really am going to come back to that one as there are all sorts of things I'm working out in my own mind) and more about DOING design.

Aida is now helping us out part-time (long, long story about Vassa - basically she is alright thank GOD, but has been through a large operation due to an emergency situation and has gone home to Ukraine, probably permanently). Today we decided to pull out the new silks from India and take a couple of hours to consider new shapes and ideas. Good fun - and I think we came up with some beautiful possibities. Not once did "Modernism" and its discontents even enter my head. Like all the best design sessions we did some of it in a newish cafe that's opened. Wonderful fresh salad. Fabulous genuinely made-on-the-premises cakes. Great coffee. Perfect for getting ideas going. One day I want to talk here about the link between good design and good baking ("OMG - just get ON with the bags" is probably what you're thinking).

Anyway, here is a taste (no pun intended) of the new silks.
They are actually simply amazing in person - the new silks are wonderful and there is no way we can even begin to capture the way they change colour in the light. Maybe this some impression, though it still doesn't get the sense of the way the colours respond to movement:

( More pictures here )
So - we finished the afternoon by meeting with Romana and asked her to try out some sample patterns (she's a brilliant pattern maker) and also hand-dye some cream silk brocade into a soft "tea" colour - and did some asymmetric things with copper, black and gold/black brocade. The overall plan is some black and white, sepia and cream and soft indigo (imagine a denim coloured silk) and cream fairytale drawings. Watch this space - in about a month I think.

Tomorrow... the fashion shoot team reassembles and we all go off to Vysehrad cemetery:




to shoot the Gothic scenes. In which Aida (who when not designing things is a part-time professional model) stars. I love doing these fashion shoots - the last one was utterly exhausting and hugely good fun.

I'm in one of those moods where I want to think about design as a practise and a professional (most readers of this blog will stop reading at this point I would guess, but try to bear with me please). I've been reading Natalia Ilyin's Chasing the Perfect "Thoughts on Modernist Design in Our Time".

So I'll start with a long quote. Here is Ilyin's account of going to visit an up and coming New York furniture designer - with a view to a job doing his PR:

He started talking about why he had stared the company and about a $10,000 black-walnut side table he was just producing and about what he thought design was and this sort of thing, and he really was a very charming guy, and at some point we went to the all-white laminated kitchen tucked around a corner and he made me a nice Illy espresso. I was just standing there, mentally calculating the price of his trousers and of his black cashmere mock-turtle and adding it to what his cost per foot must have been, including escalations, when he suddenly said, "I had a customer come to me the other day and ask me to design a sofa."
"Oh?" I said.
"Well, you know. I just laughed. Just laughed!"
Here he chuckled in a dry sort of way, so I chuckled dryly, too, having no idea what was so damn funny about designing a sofa.
"So you don't design sofas?" I asked, in a leading sort of way.
The designer looked at me and let out a low moan. He leaned heavily against the wall near the espresso machine. His trousers creaked mournfully.
"People sit on sofas," he said.

I hadn't realised it's been quite so long since I posted here. The reason is mainly that I'm both working on our first professional fashion shoots (one done - one to go!) and also working really hard on building the new shop. Which is starting to look and feel exciting now.

Anyway, here are some of the pictures Alex took while searching for good locations for our next lot of fashion photos. They're some of the nicest photographs of Prague that we've done for quite a while I think.




( More pictures here )

Okay, something really, really cheesy in honour of Saint Paddy.

This month we are in Parq Magazine. It's fun and I'm pleased because tarot doesn't often make it out of the "New Age" and into more general publications. This makes it particularly satisfying.

Download the PDF here
and scroll down to Page 12. The English transation is on Page 78.