Usually my swirls and curls are Thin-Thick-Thin, but my daughter’s princess crown was calling out to me.  It had the usual “filigree” curls but the ends were teardrops. Light bulb!

So as you can see, when I am learning something new it takes me a few tries…

Inspiration and First shot...

And some practicing on my arms...

And legs...

And other legs...

And legs again

You guessed it... it's another leg

Ah ha! I knew I had another arm shot in there.

And then!  And then I might be able to try it on my self again…

Lovely "five head" there, Michelle...

And then I bribe our daughter to let me give it a shot on her :)

Awwww... she is such a princess.

So my lessons learned:

1. Alison Kenyon rocks! at her filigree crowns.
2. Filigree with brushwork gold first and then adding brown takes a loooooong time.  Sponge the gold background and then use brown line work.
3. Darker colors work best for this style.
4. I don’t need to highlight each and every single brown line at the end.
5. I need to get Z to teach me her eyelashes…

All that running and throwing and running and swinging… after the first inning, I am done!  I’m spent.  My legs just give up on me.

My problem?  Oh… I forgot to warm up.

Hey, Michelle, this is a Face Painting Blog… get back on topic!

Ok, ok – I just needed a little sympathy for my aching torso/limbs/entire body.

Getting back to Face Painting, this is an important lesson to remember.  The birthday kid/CEO’s kid/ VIP’s kid is almost always first in my chair.  And I used to get so nervous… where was my warm up face?!

So now I keep some of my almost empty pots of black and white and a rainbow cake aside from my kit and I paint my face right before I head out for gigs.  A few swirls and curls and my warm up is done!

Oh, but in case I’m feeling a little shakey, I paint a few extra spiders, webs, wiggly cracks and squiggles on my legs too.  Good thing I always wear long pants…

We had tons of willing models and almost every single painter got to get their brushes dirty (or they got my brushes dirty- we share here in MD).

Lots of sharing and some new faces too.

Check out the pictures below!  There are TWO pages of pictures there. 

Scroll down and click the green Triangle when you have seen all 20 pictures on this page.

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Carol’s Face Painting Jams are always awesome.  She has so many talented connections plus she is just plain funny and genuine.

Sunday took the cake though because we got to take a class with Mark Reid (!!) for $20.  Honestly, I so got my $20 worth.

I’m only going to post a few of these pictures so you can get a taste of what we got for our money:

Mark Paints Karen

Mark's Ironman

Mark's Flowers

Mark's Butterfly

Mostly it is comments from vendors about increasing negativity online.

Let me explain something.

Face Painters are Small Business Owners.  We understand marketing concepts because we use them ourselves.

We don’t like to be marketed AT.  We can smell a twist coming a mile away.

And we are also a bunch of loud mouths. 

We aren’t going to sit still and take the “Beat your customers over the head with a club ’till they love you and want to buy everything you sell!!!!” tactics.  We actually stand up for ourselves and for our fellow community members.

The Face Painting world extends internationally.  But we are also a very small community.

Word gets around.  Quickly.

So go ahead and take the grumblings with a grain of salt.  But keep in mind that the very small community that is grumbling is the same very small community that you are trying to sell to.

So, Sunday was… how should I put this…

AWESOME!!

Awesome to the max.  Here are some pictures of all the fun you missed:

Jody is a patient teacher and glitter tat vendor…

Everyone gave her their rapt attention… well almost everyone  ^

Irene brought her bebe – so smooshy!

Jody and Jenny show off the “Kharma Jar.”

Here is almost everyone who stayed to make their own “Liquid Bling”.  If you do this please please please use plastic table covers and tape those suckers down!  It saved us a ton of apologizing to the management at Fuddruckers.

Poor Brad.  Don’t try to squeeze super hard when you get a clog- straight pins are your friends!   Lesson learned, kiddo.

Karen is seen here “Blingifying” me.

And Irene makes the same funny face while I go for a Bling-er-fly on her.

Ivonne showed us a fast one-stroke half butterfly.  See??  We painted!  At a Face Painting Jam.  How original!

And then my crazy girls inducted me into their “Wild Face Painters” group.  I think they were just trying to make me cry.  Silly ladies.  I love ‘em.

Alright- now don’t let another month slip by without coming to jam with us in Columbia.  Fourth Sunday of the month (except May – I’ll be in Florida for FABAIC!!!!!) I was wrong – the fourth Sunday of May is the 23.  I’ll be gone on the 30th.

if you knew

you could not fail?

(possibly ripped off from a Robert H.  Schuller quote)