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What is Face Painting?
Adults and kids have their faces painted, usually in their chosen design. The most popular faces are generally animal faces, such as lions and tigers, and football team colours. The designs available will very much depend on the face painter's level of experience and/or confidence. The pictures shown below are typical examples of painted faces. 
How Can Face Painting Help Your Organisation?
People attend your events because they support your appeal/organisation, and whilst they might want to give you a donation - it's more than likely they will  want to spend their money with you - in other words, it's a transaction; you offer something and they give you money in return. So always look at your events for ways of offering 'spending opportunities' for your supporters.
Face painting is a great 'spending opportunity' - because you can charge for it! And you can include face painting at all sorts of events - not just fetes or fayres, but also dances, parties, even your annual general meeting. So it's a great source of funding.
Try and theme your face painting to suit your event - say you were having a  Halloween event - then offering painted scary faces, or pumpkin faces fits in perfectly for adults and kids. Be novel - if you are having a bingo event why not paint players favourite number on their cheeks.
Tip: If you have a football/rugby/cricket team in your area - why not approach the club to see if you can put up your face painting stall outside their grounds at matches. You could offer fans either the club badge and/or their team colours. The same would be true of music festivals or any other large events in your area.
What Type of Face Paints Can You Use?
Use water based paint - it is easy to apply and easy to wash off with soap and water. Always use non-toxic paints - you don't want your customers coming back to you with skin complaints caused by using 'cheap' paints. Look for paints that conform with toy and makeup regulations. Good face paints have a shelf life of three years plus.
You can buy either face painting kits which will have a small number of paints,  sponges, brushes, and come with instructions - they usually do upto 50 faces - these are ideal if you have never done face painting before or if it is a small event. Remember though if you have more than one volunteer you will need  more than one kit or at least extra brushes/sponges. Alternatively, you can buy individual colour pots, sponges & brushes. These are better value as you get more paint at a cheaper price - you might want to consider these if you know you are going to offer face painting a number of times a year and/or you have 2/3 or more volunteers. You can also buy packs of selected individual colour pots, which come with sponges/brushes and books.
Click here to view all our Snazaroo range
Using Glitter
Only use the special glitter which is specifically made for use on faces/bodies - the type of glitter that you get from most shops, especially around Christmas time is not safe to use on faces.
What Colours of Paint Should We Get?
The kits come with a basic palette of usually 8 colours. You can mix these colours to get other colours e.g. blue and yellow gives you green, add a little white and you get pale green. However, it is a lot of mixing, and if the kids are queuing up, and you have more than one face painting volunteer - everybody might be wanting to mix the same colour at the same time. So, you might want to get a few individual pots to save time - just get a few more of the most popular colours/shades - and that should get you started.
Painting Hands and Feet
It's not just faces you can paint - how about hands and feet. The snazaroo First Faces book has some lovely hand and feet painting designs that are really quick and easy to do - and your customer won't be disappointed.
Click here for the Snazaroo First Faces Book
How Much Money Can You Make?
The usual charge for painting a face is around £2.00 - £3.00. The cost of the  materials will depend on which face paints you will be buying.
A small kit for up to 50 faces will cost just under £10 which means that each face will cost YOU around £0.20p making a total of £10.00. If you charge £2.00 each for 50 faces - thats £100.00 - minus your cost of £10.00 you have made £90.00 profit. It's more difficult to work out the profit you will make using the 18ml individual colour pots, because you will obviously use some colours more than others, so will need to replace some paints quicker than others.. And you will not need to replace brushes, and possibly not the sponges - so some of the costs are a one-off cost.
But, if we say that a palette of 10 colour pots, in the most useful of colours will paint between 350 and 400 faces. Each pot will cost you £2.65 each - so that's 10 multiplyed by £2.65 = £26.50. If you buy two sponges at £0.55p and three brushes at £12.25, making a grand total of £39.85. It works out at about £0.11p per face at 350 faces and £0.10p per face at 400 faces.
If you charge your customers £2.00 again per face, then for 350 faces that gives you £700.00, for 400 faces it gives you £800.00. When you take off your cost of £39.85 it gives you a profit of between £660 and £760.
What About Hygiene and Face Painting Safety?
It is important not to paint anyone who has open sores, a cold sore or conjuctivitis. If someone asks for their face to be painted and they have one of these conditions - be diplomatic, tell them the paint will irritate their condition and offer to paint their hands instead.
Is it Difficult to Learn Face Painting?
No it is not difficult! With a little practice and a good book for step-by-step instructions it really can be very easy. Most designs that people ask for are really quite easy to do - and once you have done your 15th tiger - you will be very experienced!
Finding volunteers can be quite difficult, as experienced face painters can be in short supply, and inexperienced people can be quite nervous if they have never painted faces before. Consider having a short training session before your event, make sure that there is an instruction book on the day and pair them with a more experienced painter.
Ways of Finding Volunteers:
- get in touch with your local school/nursery/pta
- contact the reporter from your local newspaper - newspapers are always looking for stories, plus you get a bit of free publicity as well. Be sure to give them the date of the event, venue and contact details for volunteers.
- Your local Volunteer Bureau will almost certainly have contacts with volunteers and most VB's have a volunteer matching scheme. Find your local VB in the phone book or for the internet go to:
Child Protection and General Safety Issues
Safety is such an important issue for public events, especially where  organisations work with children. We would advise you to do a risk assessment of your area - what things could happen? And what are the steps needed to ensure it either doesn't happen or what to do in the event of it happening.
For example, a young child is having their face painted - painter and parent are distracted - and the child wanders off. Could you prevent it from happening? And what would you do if it should happen?
As part of your risk assessment - if your event is part of a larger event e.g a local fete - talk to the organiser of the event beforehand - arrange for your area to be placed somewhere where there are no activity games, such as skittles, or archery close by.
It is important that all organisations who are working with children follow good practice guidelines. For the most up-to-date information on working with children go to www.volunteering.org.uk click on Resources > click on Good Practice Bank - choose Protection of Vulnerable Clients from the drop-down box.
Crowd Control
A face painting stall at a lot of events can attract lots of customers - so you need some way of controlling your queue. Ways you could do this include:
- a line of chairs for people to sit and wait
- give out cloakroom tickets (take payment first) and give them a time to call back click here to buy cloakroom tickets
- site 'safe' activity games close to your stall for kids to play on - such as Big 4 or hopscotch - another way of raising funds as well - charge 50p per go. (click here to buy activity games)
Advertising
To make your facepainting stall stand out from any other stall at the event, why not get your volunteers to dress up in fancy dress, and of course they will already have their faces painted - won't they! If people are slow to come to your stall - send out your painted volunteers to wander around - people are sure to notice them. Make sure people know exactly what your stall is and what you are selling - have a sign on your stall which says 'Face Painting'.
Don't forget to have some information about your appeal/organisation - parents or guardians can be reading that whilst you paint faces. You might get more supporters/volunteers/donations!
What Resources Do You Need?
- two or three plastic hairbands - to keep hair away while you paint the face
- chairs for your customers and volunteers
- supply of fresh water - for cleaning brushes/sponges
- mirror - so people can see themselves when you have finished their design
- tissues - preferably wet ones to wipe skin before you begin painting
- face paints, sponges 2 or 3 different types of brushes - enough for all your volunteers (click here for our Snazaroo range)
- an instruction book for your painters if they are inexperienced
- pictures of painted faces to give ideas to your customers
- cash box or money apron (click here for cash box & money apron)
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