Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Need an agent for licensing my art and products

So, I just thought that I'd put out feelers, and put it out there, that I need an agent, an agency, or agents to get my art and/or my products licensed.

I am a brand, or several, actually:
Kristie Hubler, artist and inventor, meshing my art, making it printable onto all kinds of home decor, jewelry and electronic accessories

Fabricated Frames, washable, sewn, and soon NO SEW, FABRIC photo frames and fashion brooch pins, with removable parts, plus house shaped potholders, along with pug and Yorkshire terrier training bellybands, t-shirts, and vest jackets. Many of the products have my art printed, formatted on them. Others, I use fabric bought at JoAnn Fabrics and other fabric stores, manufactured / printed by other companies, depending on what the customer wants.

Here's my tag line, my sub title, my catch phrase:
Fabricated Frames:
"Fabricated" means created or invented
"Frames" means structure
ALWAYS made of FABRIC

I've carved quite a niche for myself over the years. My frames and tutorial have been featured in Sew It Today magazine last year.



I've sold my art on things as big as area rugs, duvet covers, shower curtains, curtains, kitchen textiles such as potholders and oven mitts, and picture frames (that I didn't have to make or sew lol), as well as jewelry, smarthpone and ipad cases, t-shirts, the list goes on and on, through Cafepress at http://cafepress.com/profile/kristiehublerscafepress - and my art has sold on pillows, kitchen towels, nail decals, binders, ornaments, Keds sneakers and slip ons, jewelry, iphone 6 case, messenger bags, and more at http://zazzle.com/fabricatedframes - they also sell plates, postage stamps, neckties, and tablecloths.

One of my dreams came true last year, when I started selling my art as repeat designs on fabric at http://spoonflower.com/profiles/fabricatedframes - my first sale was of my Queen of Hearts Gold Crown Tiara repeat pattern, and then my 2 Paris, France / Eiffel Tower inspired quilt block repeats sold.

I have worked with or dealt with these companies, in many capacities:
Jupiter Marketing and Sales, UT
Sew It Today magazine
Lori Weitzner
NBA
Uniquely Yours Cape May, NJ
NK Thaine Gallery, NJ
EcoFibers
fabric from Fabric Editions Fabric Loft, available at Target
Pasha Industries, CO
Logos and Promotions, NY
Silk Road Associates
Thermoweb (parnter)- Heat n Bond used exclusively as patterns & fusible web used inside Fabricated Frames frames & brooches
J and O Fabrics, NJ
to name a few

I am also familiar with working with overseas manufacturers and importers here in the US.

I just feel that my art and products are ready for the next step, becoming a bigger brand, not to mention, having more exposure in the market, which leads to more sales. I am still an artist who draws and paints by hand, on printer paper of all things lol - keeps things easy to manage - however, I have used Photoshop Elements for years, and now am a novice at Photoshop and Illustrator, using a Wacom tablet and stylus. I feel that if a person doesn't know how to do it by hand, then no software is going to enhance the primal gut of the artist's work, their vision.

My techniques / tools:
2 oz squeeze bottle acrylic and marker lately
colored pencil and watercolor were used in the past, but I have a light hand, and over the years found that acrylic and marker are doing the trick
digital mixed with scans of my hand drawn and painted art

I have worked with oil, pastels, conte crayons, gouache, printmaking, screenprinting, stamp making, ceramics, pattern making - not big on working in pen and ink - just never could get the feel for it. I prefer to sit with the 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper in front of me on the table, to go to town on, versus using an easel and a big canvas, which I have worked with in the past - plus I don't have room in the house for such things. I place my work in sheet protectors and binders - keeps things managed. I am currently utilizing clear sheet protectors as a tool, a substrate, for finalized lines for my art ...sometimes lol.

I am proficient in perspective renderings, which are drawings of a space, interior mostly for me, but also exterior, landscapes, using measurements for the space, width and depth that make floor plans, and width and height that make elevations, using those measurements set aside in your work area to refer to, and then turning the 2D drawings into 3D perspectives. When you have the final perspective drawing, you then fill it in with color, shadows, highlights, etc., called rendering, as seen on my website's page dedicated to my interior design school portfolio at http://fabricatedframes.com/KristieHublerInteriorDesignPortfolio.html showing my projects. We did 1 point and 2 point perspective renderings all of the time, and I used watercolor, but now I'd use acrylic and marker more. My techinque was to draw on transfer paper, which I think that every house should have in their drawers, along with an architectural scale ruler (helps scale your lines, your image, down to a manageable size, to fit on paper in front of you to work on), both cheap enough, and practical to keep around, for many different projects, from jotting ideas down, to sewing pattern making, to making a pattern for a slipcover. What tracing paper does is you can make all of your rough lines on it, in layers of tracing paper on top of each other, using different colored pencils, too, to help you separate whcih lines go to what object or wall, with the final drawing on top, with cleaned up lines. And then you can flip the final drawing over, trace over the lines on the back, and then flip it over to the front, you go over the lines on the front, transferring the lines on the back to whatever substrate paper or board that takes the lines, and then paint onto that paper or board, for the final image. You can also use tracing paper to transfer art or designs with iron on ink onto fabric! The transfer iron on ink is available at the JoAnn Fabric superstores, like the one in Mt Laurel, NJ, for under $5 per color, I believe at least 6 colors, including white, are available. Plus you can use store coupons to buy these supplies cheap! Tracing paper is available at Michaels or AC Moore for about $7-10 depending on width of the roll - by it by the 18" or 24" wide rolls in 50 yard rolls, architectural scale rulers are under $5, and can be bought at AC Moore, Michaels, Staples, wherever they sell art supplies or office supplies.

Nowadays, I try to use the computer to do the perspectives digitally, using the grid function as a reference for scale, in the software program.

MY ART
My art is curly, girly, and twirly, in short lol
My Paris Eiffel Tower inspired art, a collection art, including landscapes inspired by photos and my visit to Paris Las Vegas casino and resort, back in 2001, is EXTREMELY popular, again, selling on fabric, Keds sneakers, shower curtains, bedding, pillows, bags, jewelry, kitchen towels, curtains, t-shirts, loungewear, iphone cases, ipad cases - very popular
My perspective rendering and pointillism skills came into play with this art.
Plus it was my foray into grouping vignettes, and other related pieces for a collection.

Also, my Queen of Hearts crown tiara in gold is popular. This would be my packaging design, logo design, graphic design liason piece. I created it for a customer who saw my Miss New Jersey crown sample frame at a home demonstration party that I sold products at, with their crown hand painted onto fabric. She wanted one, but I said that I'd have to make a new crown, bc the Miss NJ crown is the Miss NJ pageant organization's intellectual property. So, I made a brand new crown, with heart shaped diamonds and gems, pearls linked throughout - my customer loved it! Fast forward 5 years later, and someone lifted MY crown off of my website, stole it, and manipulated it for a packaging design for a famous fragrance and toiletry brand's new fragrance line - she didn't change ANYTHING to it, just made it black and white, like a poor copier scan, but repeated the crown to look like petals on a rose, with the crown petals falling. This was the moment I felt that my art was good enough for product design, packaging design, and art licensing. Imagine walking into every favorite store you frequent within a 200 mile radius of your house, to find your art on products, and your are not only being unacknowledged, but also not paid for it. Thank God for archive.org showing that I had it on my site since 2002, as proof of it being mine. Sad to say, the said company, which used this crown, due to the company's contest winner stealing it, stated that they had trademarked the art ...I found out later, that that was a lie, too, after researching the copyright and trademark office's data site for the country that they "said" that they trademarked the art in, as this company's parent company was in the UK, and the student who stole it went to an art school in London. Sad to say, this type of thing happens around the world, not just with US or UK companies. Note to starving and new artists - companies hold contests for free art. Get paid for your work. And have licensing agreements ready to have signed, by all involved, from licensing agents, manufacturers, sales reps, anyone representing the importer or manufacturer in the company.


I have a penchant for berries, so you'll see lots of them, plus flowers - I do want to do more food related art.
Apparently, I am good at drawing animals as well. I have drawn the human form, and can do characters, being a Disney animation lover, I'm told that my human and animal art have a lively animated feel.

So, if anyone is an art licensing agent, or agency, and need a fresh , new artist in their group, or a manufacturer or private label needs something different for their art or products, look at my work at:
http://cafepress.com/profile/kristiehublerscafepress
http://zazzle.com/fabricatedframes
http://spoonflower.com/profiles/fabricatedframes

I have a sales rep and intellectual property lawyer in place.

Thanks!
Kristie