Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Face Painting + Storytelling


This last weekend was a busy time for the story telling / face painting component of FairyDust Faces party packages. With our new theme parties clients can choose one of seven different types of parties. Everything from a princess party, to a monster party or even an interactive story telling presentation!

And this weekend was a busy time for the story teller at FairyDust Faces. On Friday there was a continuing education class at Stagebridge in Oakland, Saturday was a private story telling party on the golf course in San Rafael with the weekend being topped off by a face painting / story telling presentation at the Martin Luther King celebration at the Wells Fargo Center for Performing Arts in Santa Rosa.

It was a fairly heady feeling being on the stage in the main auditorium with all the kids at the conclusion of the program. The rear of the stage was filled with a choir of about 60 strong and they finished with a tribute to MLK of “I will overcome”…pretty powerful stuff




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Sunday, January 10, 2010

Happy New Year



At the start of 2010 its time to get squared up again. So for the first post this year I want to consider volunteers and volunteering to face paint at events. Many professional entertainers have lots of thoughts on volunteers and volunteering themselves.

These considerations run the gamut from having untrained and/or unskilled volunteers working and taking a job that could possibly go to a trained individual to having a volunteer painter do actual ‘damage.’ Most often this is by having the volunteer use materials that aren’t for use on the skin, the child having a bad reaction and then being afraid to have their face painted again. This can be exacerbated by the well meaning parent reminding a child ‘don’t you remember how hard it was to get it off/how much it itched/the rash you got etc should the child want to be painted again.

This of course has the unintended effect of putting the professional in a position to try and explain what good and bad products are, often during a busy festival or under a time pressure. Sometimes the parent relents and the child is painted, sometimes they agree to a patch test but sometimes the parent assumes the entertainer is just trying to make that extra buck and isn’t being truthful.

I encourage parents to give it a try if they don’t have the resources to hire a professional and I also direct them to quality products and recommendations on where they can buy them online or at local retailers. The internet is a wealth of information and a motivated parent should be encouraged to seek out the info they need.

As a business we do donate to some very specific charities during the course of the year. We also offer a nice non-profit discount to other charities once our limit oif volunteer events is full. In 2010 we will again be donating in-kind services to various organizations and have just completed our first event, a post-holiday party with Bob Burke’s Kids, an organization that helps terminally ill children and their families in Sonoma County California. These kids are battling cancer and other serious illnesses: http://www.bobburkeskids.org/ the pink tiger and floral crown were done on teenage boys connected with the special Olympics. We were also blessed to paint several *fabulous* teens with Downs syndrome

This month we will also be doing a story telling/face painting presentation in honor of Martin Luther King JR. http://eventful.com/santarosa/events/martin-luther-king-jr-annual-birthday-/E0-001-027187243-7