Have you ever wished you could get your hands on one of our fun images? For some of them, now you can! In 2021, we signed with a licensing agent to get our photos on products like stationery, notebooks, greeting cards, etc. We recently learned that one of our images will be on a birthday card at Trader Joe’s – let me know if you happen to see it in a store!
But art licensing is a bit different than our daily work shooting photos and videos for some really big brands, so let’s talk about how it works.
How does art licensing work?
When you license artwork, someone can make and sell an item with your artwork printed on it, but you still get to keep the legal ownership of your photos. A licensing agent (like Wain’s World) can help bridge the gap between creatives and major retailers and companies across the globe. Essentially, by licensing our art, we make it easy for people to use our images while we still get paid — that’s a win-win for creatives!
I first learned about licensing from my friend Kristen Ley, of Thimblepress. She offers 1-on-1 business consulting on her site and is so incredibly helpful in teaching about the world of licensing! In addition to owning a wildly successful stationery business, Kristen’s artwork has also been licensed by dozens of retailers (including a line for Target!). If you’re looking for more information on how to get started in licensing, definitely check out her site for resources.
Art in the making
If you haven’t yet noticed, we have a thing for candy and desserts! Check out where our sugar craze took us this time.
Hop over to my socials, and it won’t take you long to figure out that we love all things sugar here at LISH!
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Unfortunately, I’m allergic to corn syrup…So, instead of eating it, I’m inspired by it and we used it to make some pretty fun pieces of art. This is how the candy crush collection was born!
Candy crush
From Valentine’s Day to St. Patty’s and Easter, the Candy Crush collection uses our fav food group (candy) to represent fonts and icons, a lot of which have a fun holiday tie in! These photos could be used on so many different seasonally inspired holiday products, and maybe even a calendar one day? It’s also fun to just play with “every day” items like candy to make art!
California dreaming
When I moved to Los Angeles in 2016, I was smitten by the sunshine. I never knew what it was like to wake up to solid blue skies, or to walk outside without even considering what the weather was like, or to be able to comfortably train for a half marathon any time of the year.
I’m convinced that everything is more beautiful when the sun is shining, and that’s why I love California. When we moved to the midwest in 2019 for my husband’s residency, it felt like a total gut punch and I’ve been fawning over my old photos of the golden state ever since. This collection contains some of my favorite images from my time living in LA, and I hope that they can help to take you on a visual vacation
Do these photos make you want to hop on a plane and fly straight to Cali? It doesn’t get better than sunshine and rainbows if you ask us.
Have your cake and eat it, too
I first saw “cake numbers” on pinterest starting to get popular for birthday parties, and I thought – how cool would it be if those cakes could be shaped like letters, and then turned into a quote? So I got in touch with a local bakery, Whipped by Aubrey, and we worked together to make and photograph all 26 letters of the alphabet + numbers too! By shooting them as individual letters, we now have an entire virtual cake letter alphabet that we can mix and match to create any saying or quote! These shots are so fun, and they’d look great on a greeting card, notebook, mug, you name it!
Want to use our photos?
While these shots are fun, creative projects we take on, we’d love to see even more retailers license our images! If you’d like to license our images for your products or commercial use, please contact Liz Wain of Wain’s World.
