Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-born American film actress and inventor who was born on November 9, 1914 and died on January 19, 2000. She was a film star during Hollywood's "golden-age" and was often typecast as a provocative femme fatale.  She appeared in many films throughout her career, including "Ecstasy" (1933), "Algiers" (1938), "Boom Town" (1940), and "Samson and Delilah" (1949). She was married six times and had three children. 

What interests me about her, however, is that she was also an inventor who pioneered the technology that would one day form the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth systems. Her achievements are a little geeky for me to fully understand, but she basically co-invented a technique for "spread spectrum communications" that paved the way for the tech in all our gadgets that we use today.  Lamarr's invention was originally intended to help the US Navy remotely control torpedoes during World War II.

She also created a patented "Secret Communciation System" designed to keep the Nazis from intercepting Allied transmissions by jumping radio frequencies.

Lamarr was also inspired to innovate in the world of aviation as Howard Hughes (a businessman and film director) wanted to create faster planes that could be sold to the US military. She bought a book of fish and a book of birds, and looked at the fastest of each kind. She combined the fins of the fastest fish, and the wings of the fastest bird, to sketch a new wing design for Hughes’ planes. The military ordered 100 of the planes in 1943, but only 2 prototypes and a mockup were ever completed. Still, this is quite an accomplishment for someone who is also a current Hollywood actress, I'm sure you'll agree. 

Lamarr was rightly given an honorary award by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1997 for her contributions to the field of technology, and I feel she deserves more recognition. 

I think she is a remarkable woman and I am so glad she received that award before she died and also was able to see some of the modern uses for the technology before she passed in 2000.  I would have loved to have met her for a cuppa and a chat. 

To read more, see: 

Hedy Lamarr | Biography, Movies, & Facts | Britannica

How Hedy Lamarr and Her Inventions Changed the World (leaders.com)

Hedy Lamarr (womenshistory.org)

  xxx

As you may have seen, all my new stocks are finally here! I am just booking into my system the last ones (style 9 in the clear colour), as I need to find them a more permanent home, but all the breast forms are back in stock.

I have also made a little run to test how you like Teardrop 2 in an even bigger 1000g size. Coming soon! 

Just a quick little stock update for you:

I've had some terrible issues with sourcing my raw materials for my products, so you may have noticed that some of my breast forms in particular have sold out.  I have to allow that to happen, starting production after that due to these logistics, and I am so sorry about that. It means I will do bigger production runs when I do. 

The good news is that all the breast forms are currently in production, as well as breast enhancer styles 9 and 12. I am hoping for the following:

• Styles 9 and 12 to finish first and be back in stock in around 3 weeks.
• All breast forms to be finished and restocked by the end of April absolute latest, but hopefully closer to mid-April.

All my other breast enhancers are just going into production now :) 

It rolls around fast, but here we are again with another Black Friday/Black Friday week/Black Friday Month.

You can probably see that I'm not running offers for it here on my site, or anywhere else that you might find me.

The simple reason being that for an independent shop, it's become a beast that we can't contain. Buyers expect massive savings beyond the scope of what a small business can afford. It does depend on the business of course, so I can only really speak for my little store, but many of us keep our prices as low as we can and run on small profit margins all year round.  We operate our shops from a place of love and care for our customers, offering value and quality of service and product. Our costs are high, being such little enterprises who don't have the buying power of large stores, and we absorb those in order to offer a great value product.  

So, when it comes to massive savings, it's just something I can't do.  If I could do it, it would mean I would be charging you too much in the first place.  

I think that's a better way to run my store for you, and I hope you agree. 

 x x x 

Here is the latest update from Royal Mail regarding ongoing industrial action affecting my posting and deliveries of your products:

Information about deliveries

Strike action in delivery offices will take place on Friday 4 November and Thursday 9 November. Customers will not receive a delivery on those days.

Customer Service Points will be closed on those days and Redelivery and Parcel Collect services won't be operating.

I have just spent my lunchtime reading about this remarkable woman, so I just wanted to share a little info about her here. I do love to highlight the achievements of feminist icons and trailblazers through the years.

Angelica Kauffmann

Anglica was a painter, who carved her way in the male dominated world of art and became hugely successful in London and Rome. She was born on 30th October 1741 in Chur, Switzerland. Her father was an impoverished artist who encouraged his daughter's interest in art. By the age of 11, Angelica's prodigious talents were widely recognised: she was a gifted musician, spoke four languages, and was commissioned to paint portraits of aristocrats and members of the clergy.

Her mother died when Angelica was 13 and she and her father moved from Como to Milan and then to Schwarzenberg in Austria before returning to Italy, where Angelica became a member of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze in 1762 – an extraordinary achievement for a woman of only 21. As famous for her charm as she was for her artistic gifts, she became a fashionable portraitist for British tourists in Rome – then the centre of the Western art world – and became close friends with Joshua Reynolds (they painted each other's portraits).

The year before the inauguration of the Royal Academy, however, Angelica's life was marred by a terrible scandal: she was duped into marrying a man who presented himself as Frederick de Horn, a wealthy Swedish count. He was in fact a penniless valet. The relationship ended after a few months, but not before he had humiliated Angelica and stolen her savings

Thankfully, in the wake of these devastating events, Angelica's friends rallied around and she gradually recovered financially – she was, by now, supporting her father and paying for the running of her household. Although Angelica earned her living primarily as a portrait painter – we know of 22 portraits, of which nine are self-portraits – she considered herself primarily a history painter.

In 1766, encouraged by Joshua Reynolds, Angelica moved to London, where she introduced the latest neoclassical ideas and established herself as a professional artist. Although 'self-advertisement was thought to be unfeminine', she was a canny self-promoter. Two months after her arrival, she wrote to her father: 'I have four rooms, one in which I paint, the other where I set up my finished paintings as is here the custom [so that] the people [can] come into the house to sit – to visit me – or to see my work; I could not possibly receive people in a poorly furnished house.'

In 1781, in London, Angelica married the Venetian artist Antonio Zucchi – a man, by all accounts, who was the opposite of her first husband. In July that year, accompanied by her father, they sailed for Ostend and eventually settled in Venice, where Angelica's portraits were in high demand. However, when her father died in the city in January 1782, Angelica couldn't bear to stay. Grief-stricken, they moved to Naples, where Angelica made sketches for a royal portrait, and then to Rome, where she became close friends with the renowned writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe whom she painted in 1787.

When Angelica died in 1807, she had successfully infiltrated the male-dominated world of classical and portrait art in both London and Rome, and established herself as a leading artist of her time. Although Kauffmann had been embraced by the Royal Academy, the battle for equality was far from over. It took 168 years from the appointments of Kauffmann and Mary Moser for a woman to be elected to full membership of the Royal Academy, with the arrival of Laura Knight in 1936.

Thank you to artuk.org for the information and Jennifer Higgie who wrote the fabulous article. If you would like to read more about Angelica you can see her Tate page here and her Wikipedia page here. 

My last blog post saved as an empty page (thank you Georgina for letting me know), so hopefully this one will pop up ok for you.

First, a little breast enhancer update -

I can now expand on that information, and let you know that style 12 should be here this week, and I shall check them in and pop them on the site as soon as possible. 

In other news, it was a Feminist Icon article that I'd written for you that didn't save, so I'll get another one added soon. I do like to write about them occasionally, and I find it very interesting myself to do the research. 

Finally, to let you know what I am up to behind the scenes, besides the usual day-to-day activities, I am currently working on my stock software to make sure it is accurate. I've been using it since November 2019, and I've realised that due to the very complicated setup I have (mainly due to products being added on to other products), the stock numbers I have are not accurate.  This of course affects my accounting side of things, but also affects you, as I can't be sure what the stock levels are.  I've uncovered some bigger issues hidden underneath that too, which means it's time to delve deeper into it.  I can't delay any longer and must figure them out and address them, to make sure it is all working well.  It's a huge job! I like a challenge and a puzzle, but some of this has me stumped. Where can an entire box of fashion tape vanish to? Answers on a postcard please! :) 

Here is it, my first digital comparison drawing of the 400g breast forms in full glorious colours! 

I will tidy it all up with finer lines and one day and make it much prettier looking, but for now it fulfills the purpose and shows you a fabulous comparison of the shapes and sizes. You can print the PDF out in what should be accurate sizing, and I hope it will really help you.  Just make sure your printer is set to print at 100% size. 

I started with the 300g and somehow moved on to the 400g before finishing, so I'll head back and finish that one next. Replicating the different sizes for each should be much quicker now that I've got the shapes digitised :)

This new PDF will be added to all the 400g breast form pages and help pages.

 XXX

Happy sunny June day! 

It still amazes me that anyone reads this little blog, but I know that new and "old" customers alike do, so here is a little update for you, fresh from my head!

As many of you know, I run the store on my own, with help for the packing side of things from my lovely Mum.

My daily tasks do vary, but generally I spend the morning doing urgent emails, then packaging up and dispatching orders, and dealing with urgent stock tasks. I then get to go back to emails later in the afternoon on a Monday, mid/late morning on other days.  The emails I receive and like to send are detailed, so these usually take me a few hours.  

The rest of the day is then left for other tasks, and it is keeping struggle with.  My to-do list/wish list grows and never shrinks! When you run a little shop, there is so much that goes on behind the scenes. 

These really vary and are tasks such as:

• Accounting
• Tax
• VAT
• Stock Planning
• Stock designing
• Stock manufacture and shipping
• Postage tasks
• Social Media
• Website and other stores updating
• Product pages updating
• Photography
• Dealing with things going wrong (yes PC, I am talking to you),
• etc etc.
• Ordering supplies such as packaging

These are just broad categories, but there are often many of each task needing doing at one time. 

On the one hand I know my customer facing tasks are the most important, but it is also true that doing these other longer tasks do help you and are super important. 

As an example, the new breast form graphics that I am currently designing. It's taken me quite a while to learn the software, but I am at last getting there.  It's just taking a lot longer than I thought and they are not even finished yet. I get sad that it means I am not replying to emails straight away when doing tasks like that, but the key point I just realised is:

these tasks help you, my customers.

They may not all be quite as direct with helping you, but they all do. Keeping the tax man happy keeps my shop open and able to help you, ordering good value postage supplies means I can send your items well protected and keep my prices down, keeping the website updated with stocks makes sure you can buy what you'd like to buy etc.

It's this I need to remind myself

So how to find more time?!

With all this in mind I've decided to have a day every few weeks where I don't dispatch/post out products to you.  By doing this is won't take me the full double time the next day, but it will give me a valuable few hours where I can work on some of the other tasks.

I will pop a note in the store to give plenty of notice, so you know to get your orders in if urgent. 

Hopefully this will mean I am able to improve my customer experience, as well as oiling the cogs better behind the scenes :) 

I've made a new video to show you the new size :)