About kyaaa.biz & shiricki
My name is shiricki and all items you can see here are either sewed, made, printed or created by me in the one or other way. Everything is handmade with love from only one person. I care most about high quality products and that is why I create everything myself with a lot of patience and diligence.
And all this already since 2007.
Gender: female
Birthday: August 15th
Studies (University of Cologne): Japanese, English & Egyptology
Languages: German, English, Japanese, Latin, French
Short biography
When I was younger I drew and painted a lot. I had luck and my art teacher realized my potential, gave me challenges and criticized the right things at the right time. When I left high school, he wrote me a heart-warming e-mail that said he hopes „art would always have a place in my life“.
When I moved out in my own apartment I stopped drawing and painting mostly and tried out plenty of other stuff. I have been interested in computers since I got my first one when I was about 11 years old. Eventually I got hooked by creating websites and learning how to code.
I started teaching myself web design, when I was about 16 years old. I created my first *real* website in the year 2000 all from scratch. Instead of partying (which I dislike anyways) I stayed home practicing everything website related: html, PHP, CSS, database maintenance etc. and of course digital graphic design with various tools. Until today – you can never learn enough. That left me with a lot of skills that I can use far beyond my very own interests.
So my first real job was being self-employed with my kyaaa.biz business for 11 years. (2007-2018). In the meanwhile I studied English and Japanese at university. My life was working and studying with little room for freetime. In 2017 – after I hit the 10 years mark – I felt that I need to change something.
The plans to close my own business had already started, so in 2017 I applied for a fulltime job that I promplty got. I worked as head of marketing and sales with additional responsibility for websites and anything online related at a very very bad company (did not know that when I applied). The company was a total mess. It was no place I wanted to work at for a long time.
In 2018 I applied for a different full time job as designer at a soooo much better company. And that is what I am doing now: designing and coding websites, creating various graphics, cutting videos (etc. …) and I am very very happy there. 🙂 It’s been a while now and I think, I want to stick there for longer. I love my job, my working place is awesome and I like my colleagues.
What is featured here?
Everything handmade by me. Things I have drawn, sewn, created, made, sculptured, painted within the past years. It also features some digital art projects, which are not the „classic“ way to make something by hand – but hands are kind of used still, so I added them as well. Since kyaaa.biz was usually an online shop, it did not feature these anymore, because I removed the prints from the website. Now these works are back here, too.
Where did the online shop go?
I closed the online shop in 2018. It was open for almost 11 years. In 2018, so much changed for me and my personal life that I had to make a decision. I could not care for the online shop anymore, as I should have. But I had created sooo many things – I did not want to just delete everything. So, I decided to turn this page into a portfolio of everything handmade by me. However, I decided to just show the best stuff, not everything I had ever done. That’s what you can see now.
But where can I buy your stuff now?
At the moment: nowhere. I do not offer my creations commercially anywhere, right now. I am working on a solution but that’s a secret I cannot talk about right now. Until that time has come, this site and anything I do online remains private and noncommercial.
Philosophy
Some information about the former online shop (now closed). Established 2007. Closed 2018.
All items were made in small or limited editions by myself. I am very passionate about the things I do. All items were handmade with love which makes all products special and unique that cannot be bought anywhere else. I tried to make a difference compared to all the big companies online. There are countless impersonal online shops that treat their customers as numbers. Even after kyaaa.biz had grown so vastly, I tried to remain personal and close to my customers. I wanted to ensure that a purchase from me is fun from start to end.
Did you know …?
There had been more than 1300 different items listed on kyaaa.biz!
Item 1000 was the Alice in Wonderland pillow in September 2011. There are currently a few hundreds of items in stock, ready to be shipped instantly to their new owners. Because I made so many unique items and items in limited editions not all products are still listed. Otherwise kyaaa.biz would show too many pages with the status „sold out“.
kyaaa.biz did not use an external shopping script
Even the online shop, back then, was handmade so to speak. I wrote the whole shopping script, with customer account management, wishlist, shopping cart etc, all by myself. I set value on security especially and wrote all scripts with accuracy. It was surely a lot more work to script my own online shopping too, however, I could keep everything exactly as I wanted and the shop could appear exactly as I wanted it to be.
