Illustration

I love illustration, unfortunately I am not gifted in that area!

I've featured illustration on the blog before but today I wanted to show you some of the beautiful 

works of Little Miso - Janice Law.

I met Janice whilst living in Perth as a friend recommended her to help with my logo for Our Little Place.

Janice created my logo - which I love.

 

And my business cards ...

And now this weekend she completed another project for me, icons for the book shop ...

I am thrilled with the result and exactly what I was looking for ♥ happy dance ♥ , 

you're such a talented lady!

Thanks Janice xx

all images via littlemiso

Inspired - Sophia Amoruso

I have always been inspired by young entrepeneurs, in particular woman entrepeneurs. I love to read about their journey's and how they grew something they were passionate about and are now fortunate to be able to do something they love every day ... and on their terms. 

One of my favourites that I am always seeking stories on is Nasty Gal founder, Sophia Amoruso. So I'd like to share with you a little about her ...

In 2006 at the age of 22 Sophia Amoruso took her love of vintage fashion and started her ebay store in her apartment with just a few hundred dollars. She did everything herself - searched goodwill for her merchandise, shot and styled each look, wrote product descriptions and did her best to spread the word online (hmm this all sounds very familiar!)

Sophia didn't attend business college - she was an art student for a short period of time - but she has built her business on her passion and love of vintage clothing, the desire to not work for anyone else and the simple equation of you buy something and sell it for more!

The name Nasty Gal comes from Bette Davis 1975 album "Nasty Gal". Bette Davis was an ex-model and wife of Miles Davis. It represented the edge and style that Amoruso was so solidly building of her brand. 

Amoruso has built the brand on the backs of Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook and translated "likes" into sales. Nasty Gal has a constant online conversation with its customers - they update their social networks five times per day and aims to get dressed with their customers everyday. 

Sophia sells 93% of it's inventory at full priced and refuses to do even the standard gimmicky marketing plays such as discounts for friend referrals. Nasty Gal has 250,000 customers visit the site once a day for at least 7 minutes. Top 10% visit the site more than 100 times in a month! Can we call this success? 

After a year and a half on ebay, Sophia had 30,000 friends on Myspace and was doing roughly $115,000 in sales.  In 2008 she was kicked off ebay (a blessing in disguise) and ditched Myspace for Facebook. 

5 years later, Nasty Gal has an estimated net worth of $250 million. The company is debt free and has been profitable from the start.

Love these 3 things :

♥ No asshole policy!!

♥ Everyone is individual and it's encouraged

♥ Bring your dog to work :)

I am in awe of Sophia and what she has achieved. It gives me such inspiration that I too can achieve what I want to achieve! We all can.

nastygal.com

Can you help me ... Please?

Working on Our Little Place is something I am enjoying so much.

I get lost for hours searching and securing beautiful titles, 

only problem is there are sooo many titles I want to buy but I must remain true to

 the core values of Our Little Place and that is not to have just a really

high number of inventory and random titles that starts to detract from the 

purpose of a beautifully carefully selected catalogue of titles.

But I'm reaching out to you, I'd love to hear what titles you think I should have in the store? 

Is there something that I am just missing as apart of the collection?

Should there be a new category of books I should have in the store?

Or is there something I have in the store and you think "What the ... ?" !!

You all are such a stylish group with a love interiors, fashion, travel 

and general lifestyle so you are THE people to ask? 

 Be open and honest as I appreciate all opinions.

So in case you've missed it, click here to go direct to the Our Little Place store.

I would love if you could leave some feedback below or join me on Facebook and leave a comment there.

Our Little Place on Facebook

Thank you all in advance, I can't wait to hear your thoughts

xox

Our Little Place is Open

Well after months and months of planning and keeping it a little secret, I can finally reveal.

Our Little Place 
is open for business!

So what is Our Little Place?

An online bookstore where there is a selection of must have book titles

 in the areas of interior design, fashion, travel and lifestyle. 

Each and every book is carefully selected and each one has meaning. 

If I don't love the book, I won't have it in Our Little Place.

Not only are they full of inspiration through beautiful images 

and some words of knowledge they all look amazing in your home. 

Let's admit it, we love books, not just to read and get lost in

 but to make sure they look amazing in our homes - right? 

Why books? 

Like many of you I LOVE books, just adore. 

I always giggle to myself when people say to me "you're so hard to buy for" because I'm so not, 

books are the best gift I can ever receive.

Books allow me to get really lost in the world of interiors and fashion.

 Let me go on journey's to places I never been and I love it. It's me time to relax and dream. 

I can sit for hours flipping through books.

What else is there?

Additionally to the book store, I've also started a book buying service for clients. 

I can source titles that I aren't held in the store - they maybe from different categories, 

or gorgeous limited and collectors editions. 

I will put a personal catalogue together just for you to start or build upon your collection. 

Need to buy a few gifts, I can help put a selection together for you also. 

It's early stages yet and there are sooooo many more books

 to have in the store and many more categories. 

I would love to hear from you if there are any titles in particular that you think 

I must have or any categories I should include in my future plans

 (yes, food is coming!) please let me know.

Please pop on over and visit Our Little Place to see what's in store.

You can also follow along on the blog

Our Little Place Blog

and  
Facebook 

I would love to know what you think!

There will be a lot more to come and I can't wait to tell you more about the journey.

Thank you so much for the support you have shown so far 

and a big thank you to my friends and family who have supported me in my dream.

Putting the dream together ...

Ok, so it's finally time I can start share to something with you all.

I just can't reveal everything right now but I promise I will very shortly.

As I mentioned a few weeks back I was going to be heading overseas. 

Well sadly that didn't happen, long story but at the end of the day things just change!

So I decided to take the money saved and the time I had to start an idea

I have wanted to do for over a year now. 

I am going to start my own business!

It's very exciting for me but has (still is) taking a lot of planning as I want to do this right. 

I've always wanted to have my own business for so many reasons but the main reason 

to put it simply is to live my life on my terms.

 I am under no illusions that it will be easy, I know it's going to be hard and a lot of work. 

But I say bring it on, I'm ready!

So I have been spending my days planning, researching, buying, learning, writing,

 taking photo's, being creative, putting together financials, emailing, organising, making decisions,

 being inspired and most importantly - enjoying way more than I thought I could. 

My motto is you never know until you try and there's lot's a different ways to try.

I am bursting at the seams to tell you all in detail as to what I have been working so hard on.

Stay tuned as all shall be shared in the next couple of weeks.

images via bottomoftheironingbasket, glitterguide

My week with Instagram ...

It's Sunday and time to review my week ...

1. I finished my holiday to the Gold Coast with the very handsome Mr Harry Kewell standing next to me at the security check at the airport. So no, this isn't my own snap as I know I just would have embarrassed myself if I got my phone out to take a snap, he was just too close haha!
2. After getting back to Cairns on Sunday night, I headed out again to Sydney on Monday morning. Good thing I like flying!
3. Hit Sydney with some retail therapy at Westfield in the city (window shopping only of course) before starting work.
4. Gift from work, yummy Aesop Jet Set travel kit. It's a great gift idea.
5. One of my very good friends sent me this quote this week and I thought it was just priceless!
6. Overcast and raining in Sydney this week but it was still a fab view across Manly from our restaurant, Manly Pavillion
7. Back in Cairns and the packing has begun!
8. Went to the movies and saw Moneyball - my quick review, good story, clever, interesting insight into the business of baseball, Brad Pitt is a bit cute, Jonah Hill has great delivery, they work well together.
9. I finally started handing out my business cards for new "coming soon" business designed by the lovely Jen @ Made By Girl. Thanks Jen I love them x

images via myfirstlittleplace