Category: How To

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Tuesday Tips @10: How to Magnetize your Kit!

Happy Tuesday! Yes, I may be down in St.Louis teaching at MAX today, but I have not forgotten about my Tuesday Tips fans! I have a great tip for those of you who are like me, obsessed with making and re-making your kits! I like to line all of my kits with steel, so everything can move around easily and stay in place with super strong neodymium magnets. I will share with you the tools I use to magnetize my kits, and where I find the cheapest sheets of super thin steel!

Here are some Amazon links to the things I use:

E6000 glue (big tube): https://amzn.to/3UxsBh8

E6000 glue (with precision tips): https://amzn.to/3KBNK4Z

Neodymium magnets I put on my paint cakes: https://amzn.to/3UzmhFO

Smaller Neodymium magnets I also use: https://amzn.to/417Qnmn

Tin snips: https://amzn.to/43pFIFb

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Tuesday Tips @ 10: Double Dip Petals

Happy Tuesday! Today I’m going to share a technique that may already be familiar to some of you, but many new painters struggle with: double dip flower petals! Got some additional tips of your own for creating awesome double dip petals? Please share in the comments!!

  • KingArt Floral Petal Brush
    KingArt Floral Petal Brush
    $17.99 – $18.99
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  • BRUSHES – Bolt Blooming Petal Brush
    BRUSHES – Bolt Blooming Petal Brush
    $7.00
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  • Cameleon Large Petal Brush
    Cameleon Large Petal Brush
    $13.00
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Tuesday Tips @ 10: Trimming your Photos!

Happy Tuesday! Today’s tip is for iPhone users who find the need to trim their photos from the background, whether it’s to create design menus, banners, business cards or other graphics for your business. I’m very proficient at Photoshop so I’ve always trimmed photos myself on my computer, however, my son showed me this awesome trick that’ll instantly trim photos for you! Check it out!

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Tuesday Tips @ 10: Loading a One Stroke Brush

Happy Tuesday! This week’s tip might be more for beginners, but could still be worth a watch if you’re an experienced artist who sometimes has trouble with one strokes…today I’ll show you how I load up my flat brushes with a one stroke split cake!

  • TAG #12 Flat Brush
    TAG #12 Flat Brush
    $7.00
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  • TAG One Stroke Split Cakes
    TAG One Stroke Split Cakes
    $12.00 – $15.00
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  • SillyFarm Arty Cakes
    SillyFarm Arty Cakes
    $12.50
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FREE Balloon Tutorial: “Head Huggers!”

This week I came up with a fun idea for some headband balloons that I have been calling “head huggers!” These are SUPER easy and fast to make, and there are SO many possibilities to mix them up with different characters! I put together a little tutorial, and I can’t wait to see what YOU do to take this idea to the next level! Be sure to share your own creations…we love to see your work!

Since the standard heart shaped cat prints that so many twisters love to use have been hard to come by lately, I thought I’d try something different! The cat heads I used on my kitty head hugger I purchased on Amazon. They come with cardboard ears and a roll of glue dots. So for parties, what I did was cut apart pieces of the glue dot roll so I had short pieces with two dots each, stuck them in place on the ears, and then when I need to attach them at a gig, I can just peel off the backing and stick them on. I think they look pretty cute, and a great alternative to the heart shaped cats!

  • Headbands 1″ Clear – 10 pack
    Headbands 1″ Clear – 10 pack
    $5.50
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  • Betallatex 260B Pastel Matte Nozzle-Up – 50ct
    Betallatex 260B Pastel Matte Nozzle-Up – 50ct
    $9.99
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  • Betallatex 260B Nozzle-Up Individual Colors, 50ct
    Betallatex 260B Nozzle-Up Individual Colors, 50ct
    $8.50 – $9.99
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Tuesday Tips @ 10: Brush Care!

Happy Tuesday! This week I’ll share with you my brush care best practices…this is how I have kept my brushes working their best for many years!

  • Brush Bath 4oz Refill Bottle
    Brush Bath 4oz Refill Bottle
    $13.00
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  • Product on sale
    Brush Bath Set of two 4 oz Spray and Refill Bottle
    Brush Bath Set of two 4 oz Spray and Refill Bottle
    $25.00
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  • Loew-Cornell Brush Tub II
    Loew-Cornell Brush Tub II
    $13.99
    Add to cart
  • Heart Shaped Brush Cleaning Pad
    Heart Shaped Brush Cleaning Pad
    $3.99
    Add to cart
  • Cameleon Brush Soap
    Cameleon Brush Soap
    $12.00
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  • Ultimate Face Painting Brush Wallet by JestPaint
    Ultimate Face Painting Brush Wallet by JestPaint
    $44.99
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Tuesday Tips @ Ten: Bricks with a Brush

What do you do when you can’t find your favorite brick stencil? For this week’s tip I’ll share how I make perfectly uniform bricks with NO stencil! I still love my stencils, but when I misplace mine or just forgot it at home (which, let’s face it, happens a lot with stencils), this is what I do!

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4 Speedy Snails

Today I was practicing some balloon twisting, and working on coming up with a few variations of a snail! The little orange one is just a single 160 balloon with a yellow scrap. The pink & yellow one uses two 260’s and one pink 160, while the bigger one with the chrome shell uses three 260’s and a white round!

It’s super useful to have multiple ways to make different things, not only for the ability to adjust your speed at an event, but to account for any variations in the supplies you may have packed!

It got me thinking of course of how we do this same thing with face painting. I can do a quick cheek art version of something, a more detailed half-face, or a full face, for many of my designs! So I thought I’d put together a little video of the amount of variety you can achieve JUST within the CHEEK ART category alone! Here I start with s super fast snail that is made up of one pounce of a dauber and three teardrops! I then go on to add a little more detail, stepping it up with google eyes, and finally with more shading and festival glitter! The variations are endless, but I hope you enjoy this little sampling of speedy snails!

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Step by Step Juggling Snowman!

The snowfall here in Minnesota the past couple of days has been MAGICAL! My favorite kind…the thick, fluffy kind that falls slowly like a snow globe and sticks to the branches, making everything look like a fairy land! Here are just a few pics I took in my yard:

Today felt like just the perfect photo backdrop for me to paint a little snowball juggling snowman idea that I drew in my sketchbook during my paint jam earlier this month!

Here’s a little time lapse tutorial!

  • W07 Ooh! Snowflake Wrap
    W07 Ooh! Snowflake Wrap
    $5.00
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  • Wolfe Hydrocolor Makeup 45 gram
    Wolfe Hydrocolor Makeup 45 gram
    $11.00
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  • Short Kabuki Stencil Brush
    Short Kabuki Stencil Brush
    $4.99
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  • 12 mil Empty Body Glue Vial
    12 mil Empty Body Glue Vial
    $2.00
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  • Pros-Aide II
    Pros-Aide II
    $14.70 – $74.50
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  • BAM Copy Cat Halftone Pattern
    BAM Copy Cat Halftone Pattern
    $6.00
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  • Deb's Dotters
    Deb’s Dotters
    $0.10
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  • Wolfe Hydrocolor Makeup 90 gram
    Wolfe Hydrocolor Makeup 90 gram
    $19.00
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Step by Step: Google Eye Bat

I’ve been on a google eye kick lately! Here’s a fun bat design that uses “human-style” google eyes! These eyes have fun colored irises, as opposed to your typical google eyes with just a black “pupil.”

Step 1:

Load a 3/4″ angled or flat brush with a pink & purple split cake. I pulled the neon pink & purple from my Superior Sunset base blender. With purple on top, paint the outlines of the wings.

Step 2:

Use a fluffy brush to blend the pink down over the eyes, and feather the purple. I love using my Cameleon large blending brush for this!

Step 3:

Paint some pink for the insides of the ears. I left a couple little tears in the edges of his ears!

Step 4:

Add a little texture to the inside of the wings. I used my mini stencil kabuki brush and purple with a HAS 5701 stencil (from the “Alive” set) to create a little texture, and wrapped it around and under my eyes a bit.

Step 5:

Using your favorite round brush and black, paint the bat’s head, tuft of hair, and wings.

Step 6:

Using a small round black loaded with white, add a smile, fangs and highlights. I also used a halftone stencil to fade the head onto the bridge of my nose. Finish it off with google eyes applied with Pros-Aide II, and some fun chunky glitter! I used “Valley Girl” Pixie Paint!

  • Short Kabuki Stencil Brush
    Short Kabuki Stencil Brush
    $4.99
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  • Human Style Google Eyes - 90 pc
    Human Style Google Eyes – 90 pc
    $3.99
    Add to cart
  • Pros-Aide II
    Pros-Aide II
    $14.70 – $74.50
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  • Amerikan Body Art Pixie Paint
    Amerikan Body Art Pixie Paint
    $7.50
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  • HAS Alive Set
    HAS Alive Set
    $22.00
    Add to cart
  • Wolfe Hydrocolor Makeup 90 gram
    Wolfe Hydrocolor Makeup 90 gram
    $19.00
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