Have I told you that I picked up face painting? No? Then, you must befriend me on FB and Instagram (>>>see the buttons on your right). Cos, I’ve been flooding them with pixs of lovely and happy children who had their faces painted by me 🙂
I met up with a lovely young lady today, which inspired me to blog about my almost-new found love – face painting. This young lady is an Artist, a Face Painting Artist. She’s a dainty girl with big dreams, which makes her all the more attractive and interesting to talk to. She’s an entrepreneur, running her own event business and I thought to myself, “boy, how gutsy!”. What was I doing when I was 24? I was a young bride dreaming to be a housewife someday. Now, I wish I have something more glamorous to share. Ptffffff!
Anyway, back to face painting. It seemed like almost all the event companies I called to ask for a freelance painter position has the same query: “Where did you learn face painting from and how it all started?”
Here’s blogging down the story:
It all started with Jiejie insisting to have her face painted at $20 during one of the events we attended together. It’s my first encounter with children face painting and I thought then, that it was a little costly. My first respond to Jiejie’s request was NO(caps intended) and it wasn’t even due to the cost. Picture this – the artist was seated at a corner, her desk was a mess with tissue and paint stain all over, the water cup was at best, muddy. Yup, now you got it. But Jiejie’s insistence got me stuck at the corner long enough for me to notice a couple of pretty little girls beaming away with butterfly masks drawn on their faces. Maybe it was their happiness that lurked me to observe further, maybe there was a certain blue moon hidden behind the clouds that day… I agreed to let Jiejie have her face painted.
The Artist, although looking pretty much in a mess, was in fact very good at her craft. Within minutes, Shanice was transformed into a pretty little butterfly!
I thought to myself then, “WOW! How cool!”.
I have to try this out someday… and “someday” came not too long later when the RC was looking for volunteers to help up with some children programmes. I thought to myself then, that if I could figure out how (to face paint), I could help up too. Happily, I went to Spotlight and bought some face paint to try out at home. It turned out to be lotsa fun for the kids and I! And I know at that instant, that I was hooked to it. Here’s one my first works. Pretty not bad yer.*thick skin*
Since the experiment at home turned out quite well, I went ahead to volunteer myself as a Face Painter at the RC event. Here are some of my works that day.
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| Painting Shanice’s face. |
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| My last pair of happy customers that day. They waited patiently for their turn and were go well behaved throughout the process. |
I am almost sure, I painted almost 15 spidermen that day.
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| Here’s one more Spidy. My neighbour was saying that the whole estate was filled with little spidermen. Lolx. |
Having a few months of experience in face painting, I am looking for more opportunities to paint and earn some money out of it to help with the finances at home. As you know, I am now, officially a freeloader, surviving on freelance income. The plan in to get a few regular retainer accounts to help cover the basic expenses under my plate, while taking up other assignments (ie tution and face painting) to bring in more income. Sounds like a plan doesn’t it? I almost admire my own optimism. Boy, what was I thinking? This is so risky!!! I have my situation to thank, honestly, if I wasn’t given that push, I would probably take another 2, 3 years (or likely forever) to finally take the plunge.
Now that I have ‘jumped’, I can (and will) only look forward to the future, the road ahead, and focus on the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ll tough this out – I can do anything, cos I’m a mom. You see, I have kids!