Who needs a canvas anyway?

About a week ago I attended a wedding as the flowergirl "wrangler" (my daughter was the flower girl) and while I was there, a wife of a friend of my husband's sat down next to me right next to me and said, "Can you paint faces?"

I was a little caught off guard as I was all fancied up in a cocktail dress and not in artist/art teacher mode but the moment she mentioned painting, I snapped right back and didn't hesitate to reply with an affirmative YES. What happened was this wife of a friend of my husband's had asked another friend of my husband's if she could face paint (this person was at the wedding) and this friend referred her right to me. I was completely flattered.

As it turns out, I have professional face painting sets that I use with the Art club at school for the Harvest festival every October and also almost four years under my belt of overseeing the whole student operation. Usually I am not the one who does the painting because it's so much fun for the students to do and they also get service hours for it but occasionally I fill in for breaks. Still, I thought I was a little rusty despite my willingness to say that I am a face painter. *shrug* Luckily, I am not as rusty as I thought and on Saturday I set up a very workable face painting station at a circus-themed for some preschoolers.

I went to school and got the storage box with all of the face paints and then added things to the mix that I expected I would need like small paintbrushes (for details), a circular paint palette for mixing the paints, a divided bucket of water for cleaning brushes, a roll of my favorite paper towels by Viva, and my iPad with a pre-loaded album of face-painting ideas. (I did a lot of full faces because I knew I would have that luxury and they are so much more fun.) I also brought along wet wipes to clean faces when there were mess ups or changing of minds for do-overs and a plastic grocery bag for my trash.

I set up my little station and painted almost a dozen faces total (mostly full faces) and got rave reviews much to my surprise and delight. I started with the birthday boy and even did some adult faces! These shots were all from my instagram feed - username is dreampraycreate if you care to connect that way!

 

This enterprising young gal was actually the balloon twister! She did such a great job and this party was her first ever. I think she might have been 10 or 11. So inspiring to cross paths with a young artist like this.

This "customer" was so pleased with his knock-off Mike Tyson design that he gave me a tip. He was hilarious and insisted that having his face done up like this will aid him in greater success (and increased intimidation) in a beer drinking tournament he was headed to later this evening. He was the party host's brother.

I had such a good time doing face painting that it only makes me that much more excited about doing it this year with the Art club. Hard to believe that the summer is coming to a close and school is fast approaching but I think doing this helped me to feel a little more excited and less sad about the end of summer and start of school. Also, after this endeavor, I am so much more confident about doing face painting services and also overseeing the whole operation that I almost feel like it could be fun and a great fundraiser to have my Art Club available to do more than just the Harvest festival. We'll see. Also, I am thinking that this year I am also going to get stuff for them (and me, as well) to learn how to do balloon twisting and do that right next to our face painting station. I have never done balloon twisting but I have always wanted to so this gives me a great excuse to indulge in that.