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Last month I went on my first missions trip with a team from my church, to Estonia!  We went to help Nick & Olivia Pucinni and their team of missionaries who are planting a new church in Tallinn.  While this wasn’t your typical missions trip to a third world, I think that fact that Estonia is so high tech and well developed makes it a particularly hard country to reach. 

I could go on and on about so many aspects of this trip, but since this is a face painting & balloon twisting blog, I’ll try to focus on these parts of the trip, in case it might be helpful for others looking to do balloons & face painting on a missions trip!

This was the first time our church has done an adults-only trip, and when I heard it was going to focus on children’s ministries, I immediately thought about offering up my balloon twisting and face painting skills.  It seemed so impossible…flying across the world for 10 days, having never left my 2 little boys for more than 2 nights, and during my busiest season of the year! It took me many months to give into the tugging on my heart to go! When I finally messaged our team leader to see if they could use me, I found out they had just talking about asking me to train them in on face painting and balloons for their trip. Everything fell perfectly into place.  I mean EVERYTHING.  It was clearly meant to be.

Balloon training session!

 
Qualifying the Called…
 
I know that they always say “God doesn’t call the qualified…He qualifies the called,” and I feel like that’s what happened in the months leading up to the trip. The team in Estonia asked us to prepare a “human video” (skit) aimed at kids, with no words. You know, those skits that the youth groups put together for church? Yup, now imagine a bunch of adults over 35 doing a human video! But first you have to perform it twice in front of your own church congregation on a Sunday morning! Sayonara, inhibitions! One of our teammates was our youth leader’s wife, and a very talented dancer & choreographer. With her direction we were able to pull it off! Yes, He even got me, an introverted homebody, to leave the country for 10 days and perform a human video in front of a crowd!

The men on our trip also remarked about how when they hear about an adult missions trip, they expect to be using their hands doing construction building churches. Instead, they became some of our amazing balloon twisters! I was used to help qualify the rest of the team to do face painting and balloons which they had never done before. We all left our comfort zones many, many, many miles away!

A few months before the trip, I held a couple training sessions for our team (8 including me).  The team got a crash course in balloons and face painting at just 1 hour each!  I put together some step by step sheets with designs from one of my books, and found out who the popular Estonian cartoon characters are so we could include them in our design selection.  We pulled together some pumps & paints from our church’s stash and my own paints to give everyone some supplies to practice with up until the trip. 

Practicing!

My 6 yr old Sam was a great helper, teaching balloon dog twisting! I totally would have brought him along if it weren’t an adults only trip!

We also did a little test run painting kids at church one night, because there’s nothing like painting on and twisting for real kids to practice!

Look at everyone go!  They made a lot of kids smile! 🙂

It was hard for me to pare down my huge kit of bells and whistles, but I think I managed to reduce our “stuff” to the bare minimum needed to still produce some awesome fun with up to 6 artists or 4 balloon twisters at a time!  I tried to package everything into bags that would be easy to split up amongst our luggage, without taking up too much of our personal packing space. I packed my own balloon apron and pump in my bag as well, and carried on a paint set.

The supplies we brought for face painting (minus one Paradise palette…we brought 3).  I brought a few dark wash cloths, makeup remover wipes, a collapsible water jug, collapsible water cups, several unbreakable mirrors, 2 12-color Paradise palettes, 1 30-color Paradise palette, a couple spray bottles, a bunch of round Loew-Cornell brushes, and design sheets.  To help save the team some money, I bought some of the supplies myself that I thought I could use afterwards in my business, but the paint, brushes, balloons & pumps were purchased with some of the team’s fundraiser money and will be used again at future events at the church! Owning an online store of course also saved the team as we got everything for wholesale! We were able to bless the team in Estonia by leaving one palette behind for them to use at their future events as well.

Here are all of the balloons we brought, compacted into large ziploc bags! We brought over 1,000 balloons and ended up using almost all of them. All of these are the Qualatex 260Q’s, with the exception of one bag of hearts for princess wands! I figured out we got more balloons for our money purchasing them by individual color, vs the same # of balloons in multi-colored bags.

These are the design sheets that we used.  We stuck to cheek art which worked great for our team of new painters! The three animal characters on the right side are Bruno, Lotte and Adalbert, from a popular cartoon in Estonia.  We printed these out at church and I slipped them into sheet protectors for a super lightweight solution for design boards.

Everyone took some balloons and/or some paint supplies so we had them all spread out among our checked luggage, in case anything got lost in transit (which it didn’t, PTL!).  The paint palettes, however, we all carried on the plane since they were the bulk of our expenses!

I bought a couple shoulder bags from Goodwill and one tool belt from Amazon, to equip 3 of the team members with balloons!  To dress them up a bit and to cover up some logos, I made little felt patches with balloon dogs on them.  I think they worked out pretty well!  Each bag had a pump attached as well.

We did a LOT of walking!! I found it easiest to just wear my belt around the city, and then I carried a backpack with water, my camera, rain poncho, and other supplies.  

My load, unloaded! (on a chair at a restaurant for lunch…which tipped over once when I got up! ha!)

We helped to put on a 3-day kids’ day camp (more commonly known as VBS here in the US) at a public park.  Each morning we set up the tents, tables, games, etc, and each afternoon we took everything down.  It was very cool holding VBS in a public setting, as we drew kids in from the park.  Each day the group of kids grew!

This is where we painted for three days during “Kids’ Day Camp!”  The table was set up for two painters, and when it got busy we were able to add a third painter in the middle.  We had enough supplies that we could utilize up to 6 painters if needed.

Here are the “belt ladies!” We were SO super fortunate that our team leader also happens to be an awesome, award winning professional photographer!  It was really great to have our trip so beautifully recorded.  (I’ve put watermarks on the following that were photos taken by Erin Johnson)

Me in my balloon belt, and Erin with her camera belt!

of course I had to paint a camera on our photographer!! 😉

I have to say, I was so impressed with our team and how well they took to the balloons and face painting, having never done it before!  Everyone jumped right in and did a fabulous job.  I’m so proud to have been a part of this team!

The registration table!

 

me twisting balloons on the street!

Let’s face it…we all tend to do the same thing when we see someone on the street with flyers coming towards us…we veer to the other side of the street to avoid them!  People do the opposite when they see someone twisting balloons from across the street. Balloons really helped us open doors to hand out flyers.  People could see them from across a large park and were intrigued.  They happily took flyers when paired with fun balloon sculptures!

handing out a flyer and a fishing pole!

A couple sisters in the park – taking photos with their balloons.

I made a few balloons for kids on the bus too. (photo by the fabulous Song Anfinson)  The kids start riding public transportation by themselves to go to school in kindergarten!

Challenges…

Here are some of the challenges with face painting and balloon twisting we came across, which might be helpful to those planning on doing something similar:

Language barrier…there actually wasn’t too much of a barrier as kids start learning English in 1st grade and most people speak English in Estonia. The design sheets made it simple for kids to just point to what they wanted, both for face painting and balloons.  But, we did end up having to print signs in Estonian that said “one per child” for the face painting the 2nd day as we were pretty steady busy!

Restroom Access…there were outhouses at the park but when you paint, you need running water.  While some restrooms are free around Tallinn, many of them you have to pay to use. There was a children’s museum at the park and we paid to use their restroom a couple times.  I’m really glad I brought that collapsible water jug, because we were able to fill it up and then use it all day at our table without returning to the restroom.

Heat & Sun…the weather was really remarkably beautiful the whole trip! An 80% chance of rain was actually forecasted during our kids’ camp but we didn’t have a drop! However, our stash of balloons often found their way out into the sunshine on the grass, which quickly degrades the latex.  I was able to keep my apron in the shade under the face painting table while I was painting, and I think that helped them to last a little longer.  However, by the end of the trip the balloons were popping pretty easily.  It wasn’t really practical to bring a big cooler and ice packs but if I did it again, I’d maybe bring a soft sided cooler and get ice there for storage, and maybe stress that the balloon twisters stick to the shady areas or at least store the main stash of balloons in shade.  But all in all, the balloons lasted just long enough to do everything we needed them for, and our face painting table stayed shady under the trees!

As you can see, the trip went amazing well with these being our only challenges…we really couldn’t have asked for anything more.  My only wish is that we could have done the kids’ camp for MORE days than 3, as our crowd grew every day!

Wrapping it up…

I had a fantastic time in Estonia, and have thought about the trip every day since.  The city is amazingly beautiful, and was especially inspirational to the artist in me!

some of the many unique colors & textures of Tallinn

collage of some of the many unique doors! If you like this collage, I have a Cafepress shop now open, where you can purchase items with this image.  100% of the proceeds go to support the Tallinn Project!

I’ve just completed another fantastic year at the Carver County Fair! Here are a few photos from the week, in case you weren’t already following me on Facebook…

“Tippy the Cow,” the Carver Co Fair mascott! I made this to decorate my booth. 🙂

The booth! 8′ x 8′

love my corner spot!

most adorable boy ever!!!

My wonderful friends who came to visit…these cuties are also models in my One Stroke book!

Arm design to match her shirt

My arm!

Me at the booth

cupcake cutie!

I did a lot of these shark eyes!

My fabulous Mom! She painted all day on Thursday this year!

Another one of my arm paintings

My arm again!

Cute brothers!!!

Painting one of my favorite cuties…My 4 year old Toby!

My 6 year old Sam!

My 4 yr old Toby!

Hey, my brush holder works for a fair food-on-a-stick holder!

Rain poured down at the end of our last day….which means the crowds rushed IN!

My 4 yr old Toby!

My wonderful little men and big man helping tear down on the last night! Love these guys to pieces!!

A huge, huge THANK YOU to all of the wonderful people who came out to get their kids’ faces painted at the fair this year! I absolutely LOVED painting you all…hope to see you next year!! 🙂

Does your practice head stain?  Welcome to the club!! I made the mistake of assuming that everyone already knew that ALL practice heads stain, and realized this was a mistake when one of my wonderful customers sent me an email, unhappy with her practice head because it became stained.  So, to correct my mistake, I have designed my own informational sheet about practice head care and cleaning, since the manufacturers have neglected to do so!  You can download it for free, right here! AND, I am doing this post to let everyone know how to take care of your head and what works (for me) to get it cleaned up!

But before we get into cleaning stains, here are a couple ways to help prevent staining in the first place…

Coat your head with hairspray.

It doesn’t matter what brand.  People say the cheapest brands work just as well.  The key here, I hear, is to let the hairspray dry thoroughly between coats, and before starting to paint.  I’m guessing that more coats will equal better protection.  But I would also think that the more water you have in your paint, the less effective hairspray will be.  However, any precaution will probably help!

Okay, so you’ve sprayed it with hairspray and practiced your latest Frozen crown idea with some super stainy blues.  Now it’s time to wash it off and paint it again.  (here you can of course see my years-old stains on the eyes/cheeks…hopefully yours won’t look so bad because you’ve coated it with hairspray, but below you’ll see how I got that off)

Lather it with liquid soap after use.

Try not to leave the paint stay on for days on end if you can help it. After you’ve painted on it, but BEFORE you let any water touch your head to clean it, lather it up with liquid hand soap.  Any kind will do.  I am using Softsoap. For whatever reason, water somehow seems to set the paint on the plastic when rinsed first, so do this to lift the paint off first.

Put some soap on the painted areas and rub it around with your fingers until you’ve lifted off all of the paint.  THEN scrub & rinse it with water.

Removing Stubborn Stains…

My practice head has been stained for years, literally since the first time I used it.  I started out by spraying it with a couple coats of hairspray before use, which many people recommend.  This didn’t seem to help at all with mine but then again I may not have let it dry all the way, and I did not follow the soap-before-water rule.  So, here are some before shots of my head…

My stained head

Here you can see the ghost of a mermaid idea I was working on, stained with Wolfe black.

Over the past few weeks I have been doing a lot of research on this topic, in an effort to give my customers a better answer to their concerns.  You will find this subject discussed all over the internet, on face painting message boards and Facebook groups.  The topic comes up over and over and over again because everyone has this problem! Here are just a few of the things that some artists have said work for their heads:

Eucalyptus oil
Barkeeper’s Friend
Rubbing Alcohol
Magic eraser
olive oil
baby oil
coconut oil
pure acetone nail polish remover
“pears soap”
Winsor and Newton brush cleaner
Toothpaste
White face paint left on overnight then washed off
Olive Oil Soap from the Body Shop
White Spirits
Da Vinci Soap

I have tried oh so very many of these (aside from the specific soap brands that weren’t in my area), and ONE worked, really well.  Like, shockingly well, considering how many YEARS the stains have been on my Mehron practice head.  I’m talking stubborn, well-known stainers like Wolfe black, TAG teals and pinks, and Paradise Brilliant blues.

Here’s what worked for me. (disclaimer: I have a Mehron practice head and this worked on my head.  Every brand of head is different, and just like staining on human skin, will come off with different things.)

91% Isopropyl Alchol and a Magic Eraser.

90% alcohol and a Magic Eraser

I don’t know why I didn’t try this sooner…probably because the huge list above of possible solutions was too overwhelming to eventually land on the right one.

Your alcohol has to be 90% or higher.  You can find this at your local drug store. In some states you will have to ask a pharmacist to get it from behind the counter or order it.  In my town, it was right on the shelf in the first aid section at Walgreens.

Mr Clean Magic Erasers can be found just about anywhere in the cleaning supplies.  You can also often find generic store brands that work just as well.

Pour a little of the alcohol on your Magic Eraser to wet it.

Rub and scrub your head.  Use a circular motion, an angular motion, a linear motion…whatever motion floats yer boat!

Wow, this really worked for me, with very little effort!

Look at how this Wolfe black stain (above) just wipes right off!

So how do you get the crud out of those little cracks in the eyes, nose and mouth?

I pressed my wet sponge into the cracks, leaving some alchocol and Magic Eraser magical goodness in the cracks.

Then I took an old toothbrush and scrubbed the magic around. This got most of the gunk out of the cracks. 

Check out this shot where I have used this method on half the head, so you can see the before and after.

Amazing, huh?!  I really didn’t think this was going to work…just like every other method I have tried.  But, it really did!

Just to recap…here is a before and after pic of the head, after I did the whole thing…

before

after

Yes, this is the SAME head!!  Can you believe it?!

Remember, the stains on my before picture were there for years.  They are also there after I tried pure acetone nail polish remover, mineral spirits, rubbing alcohol, an overnight soak in coconut oil, olive oil, Barkeepers Friend, and just about every other cleaner and scrubber in my house.

So there you have it, folks!  If you are frustrated with your stained head, give THIS idea a try…it just might be the one that works for you, too!!

(If you have a different brand of head, and have your own method to clean it, please help us all out and share below in the comments!)

Click here to see my post on how to clean your brush tub!

This is going to be a first in a little series of posts focusing on how to clean your face painting supplies.  Keeping your kit clean is not only important for your client’s perception of your safety and hygiene practices, but also for extending the life of your tools!

So, for our first installment of cleaning tips, we’ll start with our brush tub!!

I absolutely love my brush tub, and ever since the first time I used it, I’ve been unable to go back to a regular cup of water.  We have two styles of brush tub’s…Loew-Cornell’s Brush Tub and Brush Tub II. The little ridges on the bottom are so fantastic for cleaning the paint out of your bristles….yet they can be a bear to clean themselves!  Here’s how I do it.

Get yourself some of these wipes…Lysol or Clorox wipes work great.  And no, I do not use these types of wipes on kids’ faces!  I only use these for cleaning objects.  😉

After giving it a good rinse with water, wipe down the outsides and the larger surfaces inside with a wipe.  I find that these wipes have gotten every stain out of my tub for years.  Of course it may depend on the type of paint you use, but I use Kyrolan, Paradise, TAG, Global, and Wolfe.

Once you wipe off all of the larger, flat surfaces, it’s time to tackle the corners and ridges.  Find a brush with a skinny handle.  If you have one with a pointed tip on the end, like this one of my Loew-Cornell 7000C series brushes with a nice, sharp, pointed, acrylic handle:

Lay the handle of your brush on the wipe, and wrap the wipe around the brush handle.

Now, use the brush handle to push the wipe down between each of the ridges.  The sharp point on these brush handles gets into every corner of the tub and easily cleans off the paint when positioned at the right angle!  Move the wipe around as you go so you continually get a cleaner area of the wipe.

Once you get all the pain out, give the tub a good rinse, as you may have loosened up some more paint that will rinse out.  I like to use my kitchen sprayer and shoot it right into the ridges.  This not only removes more paint, but it’s also important to remove the cleaning chemicals that are on the wipes, so they don’t end up in your brush rinse water.

Aaah, much better!!  Ready for the next gig! 🙂

Did you know that we have a growing assortment of supplies made to help you trick out your guitar case, DJ Hero case, or whatever cool container you’re transforming into a kit? 

This week we just got in some fun duct tape! We’ll be adding more patterns in the future, but are starting with three designs that are great for face painters.  I’ve personally decorated the outside of my FatMax with duct tape, and I also wrap it around my spray bottles and rinse water jars to coordinate my tools!

We also have rolls of adhesive backed magnet tape, for those of you who like to line your kit with metal and have your paints attach magnetically.

Also, you can find some unbreakable plastic mirror sheets that are perfect for mounting inside your kit lid.  They can be cut with a scissors too, so you can even use them to replace broken glass mirrors.

I recently purchased a guitar case that I’ve transformed into a sweet setup, and I hope to do a blog post about it as soon as I can gather up all the photos I’ve taken of it! Stay tuned! 🙂

We have all kinds of new products available this month!!  But first, I’ll start by introducing our three new package deals, all centered around one stroke face painting!  The more you buy, the more you save with these great package deals, and you can even choose which one stroke cakes to customize your own deal.

STARTER Package Deal – Great for those looking to try out one strokes and see if it’s for them! Save $4.00

SUPER Package Deal – Great for those looking to add one strokes to their face painting repertoire! Save $5.00

SUPREME Package Deal – For those who are serious about taking on one strokes! Save $20.00!

Check out the photos below and click the links to go directly to our other brand new additions to the shop…

Foam Applicator Brushes, great for making beads, bubbles, etc!

Hot Wingz “Wild” Stencil

Hot Wingz “Cajun” Stencil

5″ Ninja Faces

Festive Alien Assortment

Black Cat Faces

Bloodshot Eyes

Frankenstein Faces

11″ Ninja Faces

Pirate Skulls

Skulls

Spider Eyes

Witch Faces

5″ Rounds

5″ Clear Rounds

We’ve added Goldenrod and Carribbean Blue to our 260Q Assortment!

Our friendly Global product distributors have graciously donated a great prize for our first ever competition!!

Here are the details…

The theme is painted jewelry.  Show us what you can do with painted jewelry, and one lucky artist will win three Global paints (Orange, Metallic Silver, and dark green) and a white glitter gel!

HOW TO ENTER: 
1) “Like” our Facebook page if you haven’t already.
2) Become a follower of our Blog.
3) Email a photo of your design (painted on an actual person) to Gretchen(at)Paintertainment(dot)com and type “Jewelry Contest” in the subject line.  Be SURE to include your full name and mailing address so I know where to send the prize if you win!

RULES:
– You may enter up to 3 designs per artist!
– All entries are due by midnight (Central time) on May 23rd, 2014.
– One winner will be announced no later than May 27th, 2014.
– Paintertainment reserves the right to share your images on the Facebook page and/or blog so that everyone can see all of the fabulous entries! Please do NOT enter if you don’t want your photos shown.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them here or email me!

Thank you and happy painting!!  🙂

We have just added a very exciting new option to our shop…the ability to customize your own face painting word menu!! 

We have an assortment of custom designed word illustrations to choose from.  Simply choose the size and orientation that you’d like your file to be laid out in, add the number of designs to your shopping cart that you’d like (just $1.00 each), let me know which words you’d like via email, and I will build and email you a custom file!  You can then print it, laminate it, frame it, etc!

I just received a new shipment of brushes today from Loew-Cornell and had a lot of fun experimenting with them!  These unique styles are great for speeding up detailed patterns like stripes, plaid, fur, checkerboards, and more!

Don’t expect these to be around much longer, because this style of brushes were actually discontinued by Loew-Cornell back in 2005.  I was able to get some of what they have left though, and am finding them to be really fun to experiment with!  Each brush is available now for $5.00 each…for as long as supplies last!

Here are some photos of today’s experiments with these brushes….

2-head liner

2-head liner used for whiskers

5-head liner patterns

Flag – stripes and stars done with a 5-head liner! Can also do with a 2 or 3-head liner.

Fur done with a 5-head liner

Repeat overlapping lines for super quick and uniform lace designs!

5-head liner is great for musical designs, too!

Plaid Striper

Checkerboard Brush

Checkerboard brush used with TAG one-stroke Tropical cake to make a basket weave

Four huge packages arrived on my doorstep today and I’m happy to announce that we have several new items now available!

We now have the bee bodies without black tips!

Now, joining our bear heads, we have BIG bear heads!  Flip them upside down and you also have an instant body AND head!

These caterpillar balloons are great not only for caterpillars, but make great butterfly bodies!

These 16″ white plastic balloon sticks add a whole new experience to your balloon animals, giving the kids a stick to carry their animals and walk them around the room!

1/2″ Pom Poms are super fun to put inside your clear balloons! We now have packages of 100 in multiple colors for just $1.99!

These cool, un-breakable, plastic mirrors measure 6″ x 9″ and are just $4.00 and can be cut with a scissor!  These are great for those of you who are customizing cases and turning them into face paint kits.  They are super lightweight and can easily be mounted inside your case, or even can be used to replace a broken hand mirror!

These cool little .75″ diameter foam daubers fit right on your fingertips!  You get three of them for just $2.50!

We also just got in another big shipment of Global makeup, and hope to have some more Wolfe AND more new Loew-Cornell brushes coming in soon!  Stay tuned for updates!