A Sleepover Party

On Sunday, I had a more unusual event for me.  I entertained at the "morning after" of a 7-year-old's sleepover birthday party of just four girls.  It was a blast!  I arrived at 11 a.m. to squeals of "She's here!  She's here!" which is one of the things that make my jobs so great.

For these girls, I brought my henna and temporary tattoos, and their creative brains gave me a run for my money.

Even as the girls went through my glitter tattoo stencils, they asked for the designs to be bigger, so I had to freehand them.  I think I did a good job!

Lots and Lots of Henna

I was hired to do henna tonight at a birthday party for a 14-year-old girl.  The kids were great, though I was really disconcerted to hear "Oh, this is from Glee" when songs from my junior high and high school years were playing.  Wow, am I that old?  Really?  When did that happen?!

At any rate, the party was outside, where the humidity was wreaking a bit of havoc with the henna's consistency, but I got some decent results and the kids loved it.  Mom had set up a great little table from me, with printed paisley designs to "set the scene."  That was great!

Some of my pieces...

(The girl pulled this one up on her smartphone; it apparently means "love.")

(In case you can't tell, peace signs are "in" this year!)

And my very last request of the night, from the birthday girl's younger brother, a penguin.  I drew it first in surgical marker to be sure I'd get it right, and you can still see it behind the henna.  The marker is easily washed off, while the henna stain will remain.  It was quite dark at this point, and I was working by a dim porch light, so I wasn't quite as "on" the marker as I thought I was.

And yes, the penguin is holding a little fish.  I just had to.

LA Fete 2010

I have had the most amazing time this past week, at the Louisiana Living Arts Festival in New Orleans, otherwise known as LA Fete.

LA Fete started in 2006, when I was offered a pot of gumbo. No, seriously. I'm a member of some international face and body art discussion groups, and I mentioned in one that my favorite food was Cajun. Susie Pierce, otherwise known as Susie the Crazy Cajun, told me that if I came down to her hometown of Baton Rouge, she'd make me a pot of gumbo.  My response was, "You name the weekend, I'm there," and all of a sudden there were about 30 other artists chiming in with "me too!"  We found ourselves picking St. Patrick's Day weekend of 2007, and LA Fete was born.

Once a party was planned with so many artists, it was only natural that we intend to practice our art, and that morphed into scheduled classes and workshops.

So once a year, for 4 days in March, I go down to New Orleans for LA Fete.  I take classes, jam with my friends, face and body paint, and practice my henna. 

We attend the New Orleans St. Paddy's Day parade, take an afternoon to face paint at the Audubon Zoo and donate the proceeds to charity, and body paint models for a show at a French Quarter club.

On Thursday night, we had a zombie crawl, and I got to become a tourist attraction in my own right.  I'm waiting to see photos of myself show up on Facebook or Google.  My friend Z painted me, and I painted other friends Dot Com the clown and Liz Alaniz.

This year, for the first time, my husband Eric came with me.  After the Fete was over, we stayed an extra day and went to the aquarium.

We're finally home and exhausted, but it was worth it!  Nowhere else do I get an experience like that, working alongside the masters and feeding off of each others' creativity.  My clients will benefit from it, too.  Every time I come back from LA Fete, my skills are vastly improved.  I can't wait to try them out this weekend!

Afternoon of Henna

I was hired to do henna today at my client's daughter's 50th birthday party. Yes, 50th. I was a surprise, part of the birthday gift, because the birthday girl is a huge henna fan. It showed when my client introduced me to her daughter, and she kept looking back and forth between me and her mother saying, "Really? Seriously? You have henna?" and then sort of squealed.

She wasn't the only one; I was a hit at the party in general, and people got henna even though it meant they couldn't get back in the pool on a nice, warm day. My takers were mostly girls and women, though some men went for it too.

I think the only person who might not have loved me to death was a teenage boy who wanted to use my henna himself to "graffiti" inappropriate words or pictures on another boy. With young kids at the party, I didn't think this was the proper venue for such things and refused.

I do lament the fact that I wasn't able to get good, clear photos of these last two. I really liked them, but it was headed toward evening and with the dim light, I had trouble getting the camera to focus properly. I figure they're worth posting anyway.

It's a Lot Less Easy on Myself

I'm going to the NY Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo tomorrow, as I've done every year since its inception 32 years ago. Before I got into this business, I'd go every summer and get a henna tattoo. Now, though, I keep henna in my freezer, so I pre-henna myself. Yesterday was the day.

The idea in my head was difficult, I must say, to execute on my own ankle and leg. Not being a contortionist, the angle was a tad trying, but I think I did a fairly good job, though I didn't get quite the composition for which I was aiming...

What is henna, you ask?

It's a paste made from a powdered plant and various essential oils. It is drawn onto the skin, where it remains for several hours, leaving a stain in the top few layers. Note, please, that the henna paste in the photo is brown. Henna, real, true henna, is only ever brown. If you see "black henna," run. Run like the wind. What is dubbed "black henna" is really PPD, a chemical used in hair dye, in a much higher concentration than you find in the box on your drugstore shelf. Even at CVS, the boxes warn that the dye should be kept away from the skin. Think, then, of the danger of increasing the potency and leaving it on the skin for an hour... on purpose. Unfortunately, some unscrupulous "henna artists," knowing that many people are looking for instant gratification, use the "black henna" PPD to give a quick black stain.

I myself had two "black henna" tattoos done before I knew what it was and how dangerous it could be. Thankfully, I was not insantly allergic to it. My friend was. She had a raised, painful, itchy red welt across her shoulders for months after her one and only "black henna" tattoo. Thing is, this is something to which you actually build an allergy. Had I continued letting people use black henna on my skin, I could end up eventually with a similar welt, or worse. I could have been scarred and burned. For more information on the effects of "black henna," look here. There are photos, though, so don't look before you eat... unless you're dieting.

Why, then, would anyone in his right mind use or want "black henna"? Because this is the stain achieved with natural brown henna...

... at least when the paste is first removed. It is a light or bright orange. It is over the next couple days that the stain darkens to a nice, deep brown, and then lasts from one to three weeks. The attraction of a quick black stain becomes obvious, especially when these "artists" don't warn their customers regarding the dangers.

And this is what the henna stain looks like the next day when the tattoo is done with natural brown henna, as it should be.

Looking Back

People ask me all the time how I got into face painting. It amazes me when I remember how I fell into this vocation.

I do have an art background. I'm fairly certain that there were art supplies waiting in my crib for me when I arrived home from the hospital after my birth. OK, that's an exaggeration. Maybe they were waiting in the closet until they were safe for me to use. I do know that I took my first art classes at a local NJ museum when I was 5. I know that I never went a year without art classes, even getting up an hour earlier than necessary to take "early morning art" during my senior year of high school because I was taking things like calculus and physics and political institute, but couldn't bear the thought of a year that couldn't fit an art class.

The first time I ever painted a face - a moving "canvas" was a whole new arena! - was when I was in college, between 1988 and 1992. I was a member of Starlight Foundation, an organization similar to Make-a-Wish. In addition to raising money to grant wishes for terminally ill children, we hosted pizza and face painting parties at a local children's hospital in Boston.

I remember one of those parties like it was yesterday. I remember going to the "congenital defects" ward first, and meeting a little girl, probably about four years old. She couldn't speak, so I had her point to some sample photos I had, and she pointed to the clown. I asked her, "You want me to paint you as a clown?" and she nodded yes. I started, but she kept rubbing the makeup from her face and trying to transfer it onto me with her fingers. Finally, I asked her, "Do you want to paint me instead?" and she nodded yes again. Emphatically.

I handed her the brush and my face paints, and she "scribbled" all over my face, my arms, my hands. I remember the nurses commenting that I was terrific for letting her do that, but as I saw it the point was to make her happy. Because we were using real face paints (i.e. makeup rather than craft paint), it'd be easy to remove at will. Finally, since I wasn't doing my share with the other children, I had to start moving on. This little girl took my hand and came with me, "helping" me with all of my other customers in that ward. She was a sweetheart and I hated to leave her.

We then went to the "behavioral problems" ward. Remember those troublemakers in high school? That's were these kids were likely headed, and so their parents would send them to live in the hospital and work things out with the docs. I honestly don't know how I feel about that, but I do know that I had fun painting them. They were all boys, from 10 to 14 years old, and one of the nurses told us that we were the highlight of their month. Really? A bunch of college geeks with some pizza and paintbrushes? How tough could these kids be? I wondered. They weren't, really, no tougher than any others. They just needed some help, maybe distance from their circumstances. One kid told me about how his older brother had been teaching him to steal hubcaps, for instance.

Another, though, another approached me and said, "Out of all the kids you could have visited in all the hospitals, thank you so much for choosing us." My heart melted.

That wasn't really the start of it, though, not really.

The start came many years later. It was September of 2003, and my friend's twins were turning 7. We were brainstorming inexpensive entertainment, and I remembered, "I have this clown costume... but I don't clown. I haven't juggled since college and even then I was just learning. I don't do magic. What can I do?" Aha! Insert light bulb graphic above my head. Face painting! Amusingly, I suggested to my friend, "You buy the paints, because you've got kids and you can keep them afterwards to use later. I'll never need them again." Famous last words.

I painted my heart out at that party, and the kids loved me! I trumped the pinata! I kid you not, there were children who refused to leave my line to go hit the pinata and get candy. I have no idea why. My painting then was... well... not so much up to par. Basically, I stunk. Don't believe me? Look!

Yes, that was my very first tiger. Please contrast it with the very cute little girl painted as a tiger at the top of this blog, the one in the header. That is my newer tiger, as painted in 2008. It comforts me to see how I've improved.

That, however, is an aside. In 2003, this poor kid wore my very first tiger. And still I trumped the pinata. I simply cannot fathom why.

As planned, though, I did leave the face paint kit, an 8-color Snazaroo palette, with my friend for her use. It wasn't long after that, though, that I was telling another friend about the party... and this friend had a daughter turning four. You can guess what happened. Again, not taking the hint, I told her to buy the kit herself for me to use, so she could keep it. Again, I was sure I'd never need it in the future.

This time, though, people were asking me what I charged to do parties. Hmmm... Really? Now that is an interesting thought!

So... I bought myself an 18-color Snazaroo set and some Avery business card blanks, and called myself a "business." I started testing different markets and different arenas, and I've been up to my eyeballs in painting ever since.

Not only that, but I've expanded. I also do temporary tattoos...

... and henna! ...

Plus, I've started teaching myself balloon twisting. My balloons are somewhat better than my initial foray into face painting, but then they'd have to be, wouldn't they?