I probably should ellobarate on the artist bit…like “artist, designers, crafters, indie designers” etc.

I bumped the sound up a bit in this one, hope it’s not to overpowering?

Ammiki.com

I find it hard to know where I exactly fit in to the scheme of things with my business. I enjoy my creative side with Nomuu and just recently created Ammiki, and so you would think I would want to hang out with creatives all day long, but the truth is I  probably tend to gravitate more towards entrepenurs and startups. I tell you why! A lot of entrepures have very similar traits to me, and that is they are very ADD inclined, usually very open and down-to-earth and I don’t feel judged for coming up with a million ideas, I connect with those telling their stories, and how many things they tried and failed at. I am not sensible when it comes to buisness. But what I lack in sensibility I make-up with passion, character, and creative solutions. I always find solutions to a problem and nut things out. Usually that means, I find someone else to do the things I am not good at or do not enjoy.

Typical example of this, is that I get someone else to sew my bags. Yes that’s right I have someone sew my bags, the reason being is I hate to sew, and I would rather spend time developing ideas, creating fabric designs and developing bag designs. I utilise my best skill-set, and let others do what I am not good at. And as an ADD entrpenrial type, I would never get any of my ideas off the ground if I did not work like this. Now I can’t articulate as well as scoutie girl in regards to why one must uterlize their best skill-set  to grow a creative business, so feel free to  pop over to her blog to read more with her blog post defining indie craft movement. which pretty much sums up how I feel about obtaining help.

The other thing I do is I hire a programmer, for things that I cannot do or don’t want to. I mean a I lot of things I could figure out myself, if I wanted to, but to be honest, there’s a certain amount of coding I like to do and then I switch-off. I used to try and figure it out on my own, but would waste hours on end going around in circles. And then one day I had enough, and when a developer helped me out on a forum with a question…I decided to ask him if he wanted to do some work for me. Slowly over time, I have been able to give him more projects. He even helps train me in certain areas. Like if  I am confused with something, I get him to do a one-on-one training session with me. Because I am visual space learner, I work better doing rather than hearing or reading. So he will take me through a step-by-step tutorial in something I want to learn in regards to coding. Best thing ever….forget books. Yes just imagine not wasting hours finding a tutorial on something you want to solve, when you can just get someone to teach you exactly what you want to learn.

So going back to where I fit in, I think I am more an entrepenurial type and I see this works best for me. Because I enjoy happily getting involved with entrepenurial sites like mixergy.com and escapingthe9to5.com because I really connect with what they’re about. Because I connect, I am happy to put time and effort into those sites. I’m happy to shout out what they produce and present.

Now the problem with that is, a lot of entrepreneurs are not “creatives” in a design sense. So even though I can connect and discuss, they are in someways not my audience for my actual product. My audience typically should be people into, design, art, fashion and designers on the other hand would not nessasarily be into entrepreneurialism. Oh I know that’s not the case for all. But it’s hard to find those type online. Craft is defined clearly and so to entrepreneurialism but finding a mixture of the two that is definelty harder.

So now I have to figure out a happy medium. How do I pursue  my real love of entrepreneurialism mixed with design? That’s a question I have to ponder and work out. I think I am off to a good start by mixing with designers with a keen interest in building a business. But I wonder if there is a place for entrepenurs/hyper maniacs – he he!/designers?

I thought I would  let you see what else I am to, I was going to just show you when it was ready, but since I haven’t progressed with animating after two weeks, I thought maybe some behind the scenes stuff would  be of interest.

I am animating a little 30 second ad for Nomuu messenger bags, because I had this quirky brainwave that “hey I haven’t done animating/video in a while, I miss it, lets do an ad for Nomuu”. Sometimes I feel like I am channeling Michel Gondry (I wish) director of Enternal Sunshine and many more asweome video clips  and movies…but what I mean is, more in the sense, that he has all these ideas, and then he sees them come “to life” which is what I love doing. I have these ideas, create them, get them out of my system and then move on to the next thing.

So anyway, the idea is to have a 30 second clip of my bags. I imagined that I would have 10 seconds of each of my bags in a different scene, with my fabric background. Because I design all the fabrics, I can bring my fabric to life so to speak.I lot of my ideas especially in video revolves around nature. I think have an obsession with it. Anyway, the main one that stood out for me was the forest messenger bag, I could evisage a forest animating and a little fox and maybe a few other animals or birds coming into the scene.

So below is the animation WIP (work in progress). That fox was just a stand in…don’t ask me what he is doing The forest was created first in illustrator and then brought of to Adobe After Effects and animated in there. Some of the object where animated in Flash and brought into Adobe After Effects.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now I am trying to animate the fox it self. I have not done frame-by-fram animation in such a long time, and I have to admit it’s not my favourite thing do, because I am too impatient. But I think I will get there. The trick is to observe how something is done. So for example I recorded my dog (which looks like a bear) and how she moved…I also have a great book called “The Animator’s Survival Kit” which is very handy. Now as you can see I am very rusty and to be honest I never was very good at frame-by-frame animation at uni either. But anyway, I think I will get there.

So I started of scanning in some very rough and poorly done sketches, the below was not the final run

Then I went into Illustrator and Flash and drew up the fox and refined walk cycle. ( click image to see WIP walk cycle, yes he looks a bit muddled at the moment). I created the fox animation in Flash and did what’s called a frame by frame by animation. Which means basically you draw out the main steps of how a fox would walk. Usually there are 12 frames per second in animation. So if I wanted the fox to walk differently over time for 5 seconds then I would probably have to draw out 30-50 frames (so each one is drawn slightly differently). But with a simple walk cycle you can just repeat it so can reduce from 8-20 frames (or even more).

Click on image to see WIP animation

So I want to animate two other bags, but for the time being maybe I will just concentrate on getting this one finished. I want to work on it some more tomorrow…maybe finish it off. Not sure what I am going to do about sound. I imagined forest sounds…maybe I can go out with a dat recorder into the forest? The song I play over the top of it at the moment, for inspiration is Lisztomania by Phoenix

Anyway stay tuned for the final

My first foray into animating was at uni many years ago, you can see my first ever animated piece here and can see how I draw on nature…and forests for that matter – he he!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hey, I thought it best I just get this out there, warts and all and see if anyone is interested in submitting to a new curated gallery site I created at http://ammiki.com

The writing does need to be fine tuned, but I guess it’s better to get something out there and see if anyone is interested.

The concept is a little different to handmade stores because Ammiki embraces not only independent designers but also collaborations and small cottage businesses.

The reason I have started this site, is well actually because I am  stuck in between a rock and a hard place. I love design, I love being independent, I love creating things for myself and others, but I also know my limitations. I am a designer by trade, that’s my art. I am in fact terrible at sewing, knitting and all that jazz. But I still love creating, coming up with concepts, seeing ideas come to life,  but in some peoples eyes I am not truly a “handmade artist” because even though, I design all my fabric from scratch, cut out all the piece work, seal the seat belts, cut out all the lining, iron on the stiffening to bags, technically some may see that because I get help with the sewing that I am not really a “handmade artist”, fair enough. I mean I don’t necessarily agree with that, but I also don’t like stepping on peoples toes, and want to  actually  embrace the way  I work. I am actually proud of how I put nomuu bags together, I took the skills I am good at, and then looked at the other skills that I am not so good at and came up with a solution to still get my bags “out there”. I want to say it loud and proud, that I thought of entrepreneurial solution to a problem.

So that’s where Ammiki comes in, because to be honest I don’t really know any curated site that embraces collective and small cottage industries straight off the bat and expresses it loud and clear. I don’t know any site that says “hey we love handmade, but we love small independent businesses too”. I understand that Etsy has implemented this change, which is great, but hard for some traditional handmade people that have been on etsy for years to embrace and I totally understand where they are coming from. But I now feel I have to kind of justify myself each and everytime I  talk or want to submit my work to website, blogs etc and well I just being open and honest without feeling guilty for what I do.

So Ammiki says this, “we love handmade but we also love collectives and small cottage industries and entrepreneurial “think outside the square” solutions”.

I of course imagine this may not take off at all…not because I don’t think it’s a good idea…but whenever I think I have a brilliant idea, it never turns out to gain momentum like I think…so I could imagine this site will sit idle for a while – he he! But that’s ok…in the meantime I have a great gallery page to show off my work, but if you want to get your own little space…why not submit something? And bump my own pieces off the front page

Or if you interested in offering suggestions or want to help out with site…drop me a line at hello {at} ammiki.com I love collaborating

You see my blog is like my inner voice, words just flow…just like right now. I’m not really thinking about what I am writing. I am just writing, and those words just jump out second after second and as soon as I try to change that, I will lose what just flows naturally.

I am thinking of doing more blog features, but not for this blog. In fact I am really thinking of making this blog purely about what is working and not working with getting this business up and running. That was my intention in the beginning, but it has got a little blurred now, and so it would be confusing to readers as to what I am concentrating on. My concentration should be about how I am trying to build traffic, marketing, advertising, pricing structure, daily inner battles, and the reason being…is that’s what I was looking for when I started this blog. I wanted to follow someones journey, understand there struggles and how they beat it, but then I thought maybe others would enjoy learning that from me too.

Sure features, product reviews are great, but there is so many blogs out there doing that already, and doing a good job of it and I am not really sure that would be my strength, or something I would enjoy doing on a weekly basis.

So it all goes back to my strengths and what I enjoy doing, and what I love doing… is unravelling a journey. So that’s what my focus will be.

My next blog post will be about paid advertising and hopefully I will some animated videos of my bags. I have this concept in the back of my mind that I need to get out.

Trialing a new concept of creating customised artwork on my Nomuu messenger bags.

The idea is that you can add your own artwork to the messenger bags, as long as the artwork is your own. I will have to gain evidence of ownership, through websites, shops, blogs etc.

I’m not going to sell the bags of artwork in my own shop or anywhere else, unless designer and I want to collaborate.

I think this could be really exciting. a) because I am getting stressed coming up with new concepts b) who doesn’t want to promote their own artwork? c)I would of loved to have this option myself on a quality bag.

What do you think of the idea, any ramifications that I haven’t thought of? You can check out more detail on my shop at etsy

I just purchased a few days ago, new epson printer inks which cost me $80 in total. I put the inks in, and found that prints were only printing a faint black.

So today I ring up epson, for a solution. They said “clean print heads up to 5 times” and ring back if that doesn’t rectify the situation.

So I did that, and it seemed to start fixing the problem..accept magenta would not work. But I also noticed my ink levels were now almost empty. Remember these are brand new inks…I haven’t even printed out anything apart for the test pages, which is just very small lines in a corner.

So I ring back epson to say a) it still hasn’t fixed the problem and b) now all the printer inks are almost at 0.

The reps reply was, that’s what happens when you clean the heads 5 times. OMG, what’s the point of cleaning them, if the ink gets wasted after the 5th time? So basically I have lost $80 worth of ink.

Epson will not do anything, even though I brought the printer 2 months ago. And when I said I would complain to consumer affairs (our dispute resolution for unfair transactions) they said, “yep just do that”.

I am so annoyed.

My rant is over

Interested in helping me out?

I want to get inside your mind, and find out what you (the reader) really thinks about my blog and bags! You can do this by filling out a survey that I have created  here Girlstartups Blog Survey Giveaway and also go in the draw to win one of my nomuu messenger bags in the survey header.

If you want a chance to win a nomuu messenger bag, enter your details at the end of this survey. Giveaway will be drawn in 10 days time. 17/07/2010 at 8:30pm EST

If you’re not interested in winning my bag, that’s fine…I would still love your feedback

Note: You only have to enter your personal details if you want a chance to win a bag, otherwise you can remain anonymous!

__________________________________________________________

This giveaway is now closed. Thanks to everyone who participated. Loreta P won and has chosen the Messenger Bird Bag.

I don’t know how good this will be for me, if I want to set-up my own site with users. I want freedom, I want for people to be able to say and do what they want. I don’t want seclusion and yet I think that’s the key to success.

A place that I am selling at has rules and you have to follow them. I don’t like the fact that they force users to only link to their site. So technically I don’t think I am meant to have my own shop showing on my own blog, because you could technically “click and find” my site on there and that could mean fee evasion. I don’t know why I hate this so much but I do. It irks me. I want a site, that entices cross platform premotion, not segregration. I know shopping sites are a business, but I also don’t like totalitarian regimes. Am I being too dramatic here? Probably, but  that’s what makes me, “me”.

Do you think it’s possible to have a successful business without strict rules? Or am I dreaming?

If you didn’t already know, my goal and intention has not just been about selling bags, I have bigger dreams than that, hence that great quote yesterday, which sums up what I want to do.

“I want  the opportunity to build a company in the image I always wanted.”

Answer: The opportunity to build a company in the image you always wanted.

From: The Story Of Groupon: From Failure To An Industry-Changing, Profit Machine – with Andrew Mason