Very seldom do I rave about a book, but Chris Guillebeau’s book The Art of Non-conformity tops my best reading list…albeit my very small reading list – he he!

This book pretty much spoke to me on every page, it was like Chris took all my beliefs (that have just started to unravel in the last year or two) and wrapped them up and put them in a book for me. Phew…it just confirms my thoughts about a lot of things.

I wish I could give this book out to every person who ever had an inkling of entrepreneurship in them, or if they ever had any doubts about working for other people.  I also wish I had read a book like this when I was younger, mind you I probably wouldn’t of made the correlation between the message, and how I could make a change back then.

So in a nutshell this book basically gets you to think about not accepting the status quo in life, especially when it comes to having a job. Are you someone that wants to work in a 9-5 job, or do you tend to want to defy convention? It’s about embracing that natural fear of defying convention, and learning how to harness it. It also talks about fighting authority and why people follow other people instead of doing what the really want to do. And it also  teaches you how to overcome this “need” to follow what other people expect of you.

All-in-all a fantastic read, one that I could easily pick-up and read again and again. I highly recommend it for creatives, who are unsure if they want to work for “the man” or work for themselves, doing their “own thing”.

And I will leave off with one of the many great inspiring quotes in the book:

The people who get on in this world are people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

- George Bernard Shaw

And since I was inpired with all the quotes, I decided to create my own:

You can spend all day talking about your ideas, but no one will take you seriously until you take action.

Now that this blog is so pretty, I no longer want to blog at http://girlstartup.com, but I have a conundrum (don’t you just love that word co.nun.drum :) )…I love to talk “ideas, entrepreneurship, concepts in my mind, crazy ideas in my mind, silly thoughts that go on in my mind” and well I’m not sure if the Ammiki blog is the right place to do that? Ammiki probably should showcase talent. So what should I do?

A) Keep my girlstartup blog and reskin it, to look like this blog

B) Keep the girlstartup blog as is

C) Talk a little entrepenurship and feature artists here on ammiki

D) Have a section on the ammiki blog just to talk entrepuership, ideas etc …so something like a sub section blog.

E) Who cares? All the above ideas suck! :P

F) No just kidding…they all sound awesome…actually I was not kidding, go back to  E)

Sorry can’t embed Ted videos so this will take you to the TED page. Great few minute talk on how to start a “movement”. Brilliant.

Oh we human beings are a fascinating bunch, aren’t we?

Looks like bright colors are in based on colour trends !  See I must of instinctively knew that was going to be the case ;)

This weeks layout is live :) Hopefully I can write a little more tomorrow, as I am pooped. But yes this is a very colourful theme!  Lets call it “A little bit of fun and colour for your day”. Senioritis sent me a link to his work a good week ago, and I was inspired by his colourful combinations, to create a colourful theme. So thank you Senioritis :)

Youtube video address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gse-iO4s

Vimeo video address: http://vimeo.com/14826793

This weeks lovely designers:

• With2nsdesigns
• Stationery by Dodeline
• Ambette
• Sojourning
• Coquette Bath and Home
• Brilliant Trees Collective
• Creative Kiwi
• Dagmarabuczek
• What. No Mints?
• Senioritis
• Beads Craftz

I found this gorgeous shop via Mayi from heartmadeblog.com

There’s not much to say apart from gorgeous! I love this scandinavian design, nice, clean and simple.  Right up my alley :)

snug-online.com

Yay! The Ammiki blog is up an running. It needs some tweaking, but will worry about that in the coming week.

To coincide with the proper launch of Ammiki.com I’ve created a little video clip, featuring the latest artist on Ammiki.

Aside from the vimeo ad, there is a youtube version as well at this address Youtube video. Please spread the love with these videos or the ammiki badge so  Ammiki.com can grow. Also because this site is new, you wont nessarily get an increase in sales or exposure. The only way for that to happen is to spread the word – he he! Talk about it on all those social networking sites, twitter, facebook, forums, blogs etc

For the moment, because this is really run by me (Simone). I think I will curate the gallery once a week, as I have other work commitments. Plus I need to develop a better backend…it’s a bit too manual at the moment.

For those that have already submitted, please know that I will probably use your designs, but will work with the layout based on a theme each week, to keep designs consistent. So if you don’t see your work up now, it doesn’t necessarily mean it wont be published at a later date.

I’m also thinking of doing a little video update of each layout each week…we will see about that one.

I probably should of done a in depth write-up on the designers featured, but I thought it was just best to start off small and once I get into the flow of things, will do more write-ups on designers.

But anyway here is the designers featured this week

Check out the video below, with this weeks talented designers and if you would like to submit your own work to ammiki you can do that here.

And thanks to the designers who gave feedback on the video, much appreciated and thanks for those supporting ammiki in general.

Installing a WordPress Theme Tutorial in the next week or so

Also in the next week or so I will post up a complete video tutorial on how to install a wordpress theme, form buying a domain to setting up hosting, installing a generic wordpress blog to your domain and then installing a theme. I already have a few up on my facebook page