Imagine household products sporting your artistic inspirations. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could walk into a department store and see your designs on clothing, towels, table cloths, glasses, dishes and garden flags? Tara Reed, art licensing specialist and Amused Now featured artist, knows just how cool it is! Her licensed artwork can be found on many common household items. You may even have some of her designs in your home. How does she do it? Well, lucky for Amused Now, Tara is willing to share her insights into the art licensing business. Tara explains that art licensing is creating art for commercial purposes that you license through a contract, so manufacturers can put your art on products. To put it simply, “it’s art for stuff that you buy in stores.” If you’re interested in starting a career in art licensing, she suggests you first learn about the business. You should not only look at people who are successful in the industry, like Mary Engelbreit and Thomas Kinkade, but also learn about the day-to-day job. You must be able to work quickly, design collections and wait up to 2 years to get paid. Tara explains about this and more on her website TaraReedDesigns.com and her blog ArtLicensingBlog.com. You should also get a feel for the type of art that works well with licensing. “Art that works for licensing is art that appeals to the masses.” Gallery artists only need to find one person to buy each piece, but licensed art has to be purchased by hundreds and thousands of people. That’s why you see very common themes, like wine art, coffee art, flowers, snowmen, snow flakes and Santa. The art must make people feel good, so they want to buy it. About half the artists in the industry...