Fourth of July Face Painting Fun

Fourth of July festivities often include face painting. Parents enjoy watching as children are quickly transformed with artistic flair and vibrant colors into fairy princesses, medieval dragons, fierce lions, tigers and bears (oh my!). Professional face painters are well worth the beautiful designs they can quickly come up with to reduce waiting time in line. 

As a certified art instructor, I bring decades of creativity and fine art to my face painting. I can create any design to match a party or event theme. 

For me, artistic satisfaction comes with that special grin when the child sees their new "face" in the mirror or my sparkling design on their arm. Those children's smiles are all the encouragement I need to take more master's classes and learn the latest new face painting techniques.

Unfortunately, there is a down side to face painting when those who don't have any kind of training decide to paint kids, not realizing the dangers using questionable paints. I hear about it more often than I care to and the most recent situation came from another face painter, Justine Howland-Goodwin who photographed this poor little boy at a Washington fair. 

Justine said: "Volunteer children (nine-year-olds) from a children's nonprofit were fundraising with this type of painting. This poor boy was clawing at his face trying to get it off. He had to leave the fair because this was not coming off with anything other than a shower. It was Palmer liquid paints, approximately eight or nine years old since they purchased it. The volunteer painter kids were using little brushes, water in rusty soup cans, and not a baby wipe, hand sanitizer, or disinfectant in sight. And, turns out the brushes hadn't been washed from the day before, she was going to wash them (because we were there pushing the issue.)"

I so wish I could say this was an insolated incident but I still see and hear that untrained people are painting children's faces with "non-toxic" acrylic craft paint that has carcinogens in the ingredients. The craft paints dry slowly on the skin, then flake off causing the itchy child to try to scratch the paint off.

Trained professional face painters use safe water-based paints that dry quickly, are comfortable on the skin and lasts until it comes off with an unscented wipe or soap and water. Enjoy the weekend and be sure the face painter that paints your child