Yippeee!!! We're closing in on the double digits for my Daily Doodles! 

For today's installation, I thought about doing something with a New Years Eve theme, but as I received a new Fleur Paradise Prisma Cake in the mail from Silly Farm today, I chose to play with that instead.

My weakest skill in the world of Face Painting & Body Art is definitely the whole Rainbow Cake, Split Cake, and One Stroke Cake phenomenon. My previous face painting experience, almost 2 decades ago, never included anything like them. You mixed and blended your own colors, that's just how it worked. 

(Call me old school... Just don't call me old. Besides, I'm not that old really ~ It will be at least another 20 years before my age makes me eligible to become a crazy cat lady. Moving on...)

As I mentioned, I got this awesome Fleur Paradise Prisma Cake today. As far as split cakes & one stroke cakes, I really only have about 6-7 at this point as I'm still learning all about using them. (As I mentioned, it's my weakest skill as far a face painting goes~ and not because I can't do it, I just don't have the skill mastered yet. Plus, as you will quickly learn, I love, love, LOVE, flowers ~ I even make my own Fantastical Flowers as I mentioned yesterday. (You'll be able to purchase them here on my site soon!)

My favorite flowers are daisies, especially Gerbera Daisies with all their layers and bright, bold, and blending colors. Though I have noticed there is a big rose trend in the Face & Body Painting world these days, especially because of the invention of split cakes and their ease of use. Well, painting daisies is not so much of a challenge for me ~ I paint them all the time, just because they're so fun and aside from a round brush, Filberts are my favorite. :) 

Now back to the roses... I'm not so good at painting those, especially with split cakes. (Not yet anyway, but I'll get there...) I can draw them and paint them with acrylic paint, but as speed is a big thing in the face painting world, it's important that I practice getting roses down using split cakes to assist in the speed factor. Enter the Fleur cake and also the new Loew-Cornell 3/4 Flat Brush I got in the mail today too (also from Silly Farm) that will replace one of the crummy flat brushes I have. 

Being so excited about my new arrivals in the mail today, I chose to forego a New Years Eve theme and do something floral instead. Well, working with that new brush & cake just wasn't the easiest for me. First off, new brushes are always stiff, and secondly, new cakes take a bit of use before they, too, are broken in properly. But, I gave it the old college try anyway and chose to go big or go home...

My new 3/4" flat brush in hand, I set off to conquer a rose. Everything was working out well in the beginning~ Got my ruffly background petals in, and the center cylindrical shape came together nicely, even the side swipes to the center cylinder came in nicely too~ it was just that the center pieces ended up being a little too off center from the background petals to look like a rose ~ It sort of just looked like a ruffly mess. 

Being my fathers' daughter however; I chose to work with my mistake rather than start over. My father is a wise man and I get the majority of my artistic chops from him. He's a retired Art Director and Professor of Graphic Design, thus I was working part time in his office during my summers off from school by the time I was 13. Dinner conversations consisted of creating fictitious ad campaigns or products; or even discussing color theory and layout design... There was really never a dull moment at our dinner table. 

One summer day, when I was working in his office, I was wasting some time drawing while I waited for him to finish his work for the day. While drawing with a technical pencil, I made a mistake. So, as anyone would do when they make a mistake, I went in search of an eraser. Not to bother my father while he was working, I was going in and out of each employees taboret tables looking for an eraser; none was to be found. Finally, I decided to interrupt my father and ask where I could find an eraser and he says, "We don't have erasers here." Looking at him all confused he continued, "To be a really good artist, one of the best skills you can have is to WORK with your mistakes, not eliminate them. So I have a rule that there are no erasers in the office." 

Looking completely dumbfounded and probably like an ashamed daughter for even bringing up the subject, he proceeded to put his hand on my shoulder and say, "Go back to your drawing, take a look at it and just consider what you can make of the mistake you made. You don't need an eraser, just use your imagination. I bet it will turn out better than you expected." Thus, I sauntered back over to my drawing area and stared at my picture. Sure enough, after a few minutes of gazing at the thing, I found a way to incorporate the mistake into the drawing. We soon left the office for the evening, and I left the completed drawing on the draft table I had been working at. 

A week later when I came back with my father to help in his office, I was pleasantly surprised that he had my drawing hanging on his office wall along with all of his own amazing work. "You see?" my father asked me, "It's spectacular! I bet it wouldn't have turned out like this if you hadn't made that mistake." Giving me a little wink and pat on the back. And he was right...

Now, getting back to the whole daily doodle and rose thing...

So, I made a mistake when I first painted the rose; but rather than wiping it off my arm and starting over; I could hear my father saying~ "You don't need an eraser, just use your imagination." and so that's what I did for tonight's doodle.  

BEHOLD, the last Daily Doodle of 2014 (Along with a pic of the paints I used: Paradise Prisma Cake in Fleur, and Wolfe Black & White.)...

With that, I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope that your 2015 is Wonderfully Fantastical! 

(Oh, and don't forget~ Throw away your erasers, your imagination will do the work for you!)

Keep Creating, Keep Smiling, and Keep Dreaming~

-tif-

Hello everyone~

I was finally feeling well enough to provide you with a Daily Doodle using a design on my face tonight. I used my favorite arsenal of Wolfe paints, Loew-Cornell & Royal Majestic Round Brushes, and of course, one of my handmade, signature "Fantastical Flowers" which will be popping up on this site for sale in the upcoming weeks. (For those of you who know me personally, you know I never leave the house without one on.) Originally called "Nifties by Nadia"; I have chosen to incorporate the flowers into my face painting business as they just work so well with painted faces and whimsical designs. The little princesses and fairies out there love them too!)

My inspiration came from the flower itself; as it is a larger flower that hugs the side of the face, I chose to continue the flower design with paint on my face to make it all work nicely together. I used flat paint, no metallic paints, glitter, or gems, the only exception was adding some Wolf pearly white on my eyelids which give off a somewhat sparkly warm gold in the photos. 

A you can see, I chose to mimic the petals in the Fantastical Flower; having the painted petals cascade down my face and lining them with a heavy black to create the illusion the flower's black underside petals.

This was one I just sort of winged tonight. It was fun to play around and get back up to speed with painting on my face again. Having been sick the past week or so, and painting solely on my arm, admittedly it was a bit weird at first re-adjusting to painting myself in a mirror, especially with painting the far sides of my face that you can't see so well in the mirror. It was fun nonetheless, and I'm pretty excited about this one, and to finally present a painted face in my Daily Doodles for you.

I'm also working with some new lighting and angles that will become more perfected as time goes on, as I want to present the best pictures I can for you to enjoy. :)

With that, I wish you all a Happy Early New Years Eve! See you tomorrow with another Daily Doodle!

Baubles, Bangles, Bubblegum & Glitter Galore~

-tif-

Greetings everyone~

Todays edition of my daily doodle, I chose to keep my doodle in black & white and using a simple bird design. I found my inspiration from a Google search I did for "Black & White Bird Drawing" and found a lovely black & white bird illustration from Shutterstock - A place I have purchased images in the past for my Graphic Design work. I just LOVE the images they offer up on their site! They have some talented artists who supply images to them~ that's for sure. 

Anyway, as usual, I chose to put my own twist on the design tonight; I just like to share with you all where I find some of my inspiration to perhaps help all you out there find some new resources that inspire your own work. 

As I mentioned, tonight's doodle is solely in Black & White and thus, I used Wolfe Black & White, along with my favorite Royal Majestic Round Brushes, My Ultra Fine Wolfe Round Brush that came in the Wolfe Essentials Palette (Anyone know if Wolfe sells just the brushes they put in their palettes? I could use about 10 of these.), and lastly, my not-so-great-for-face-painting Liquitex Basics Synthetic 1/2" Flat Brush. (It works great for acrylic paint, just not so well for face paint.)

I started with laying down some white with my "not-so-great-for-face-painting" flat brush as a base. The brush worked well for this as I was simply laying down a white background on my arm. Then came the tedious work of all the black line work that took me about 25 minutes. After that, I went back in and touched up some of the white areas, cleaned up any rough spots from the black linework, and, "Voila" I was ready for my photo shoot. 

The down side of being sick this past week and having to paint on my arm is that my skin is always much rougher on my arm than it is on my face, especially because I always clean my arm with an alcohol based sanitizer before I start painting ~ which REALLY dries it out. Designs can get a bit crackled looking in places, and if the brushes are loaded a bit too much, the pigment can feather a bit. (Let me tell you, I can't wait to get back to painting on my face~ It will be a joy!) 

Also something to note, I have found that it's not as easy to paint on your arm as it is to paint on your face because at times, especially for all around designs, it's almost like painting upside down combined with a backwards twist. It can definitely wreak havoc on your neck. I think painting on my leg is easier than painting on my arm actually... Perhaps something to consider in the future... Hmmmmm....

Anyway...

Enough of my banter...

Here are some pics of tonight's doodle:

And, there you have it... A fun black & white bird design with lots of dots and swirls. :) I have a busy week ahead this week, so I will likely take the easy route and work on some basics for my doodles over the next 3-4 days due to my time restraints. Though... come this weekend, I'll definitely be back with some super fun doodles ~ and some Face Doodles at that! (I have some stencils coming my way this week and I'm SO EXCITED to try them out! I have never used them before and it will be a nice chance to share my newbie "first ever stencil experience" with you. :)

I hope this is finding you well & enjoying your week. I look forward to your comments, feedback, ideas, inspirational resources, etc., etc., etc... Don't forget to click on that Facebook button below to like & share Fantastical Faces on Facebook~ 

Baubles, Bangles, Bubblegum & Glitter Galore!

-tif-

Hello everyone!

Here is today's edition of my "Daily Doodle". I went in another direction compared to my previous offerings this past week; giving me the opportunity to try something that was stylistically different. 

As I am a huge fan of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, I chose to find my inspiration based off of those styles today. I adore the peacock designs from those eras, and chose to go with a peacock feather design for my doodle today. 

I found a really neat embroidery image of some peacock feathers (via Google random search under "Art Nouveau Peacock Images") to use as my point of reference, but added my own interpretation and style to make it my own. (Left Photo Below)

I stayed with Wolfe Regular & Metallix Paints for this project; and started by laying down a sheer layer of the pearly white and yellow gold with a sponge. Then I used a mini filbert brush and picked up color from the  green & blue lines of a Wolfe Rainbow Cake, using that for laying down my base for the feathers and flowers. 

After I had the pearly-gold base laid out and had shape blocked my design with the stripes from the Rainbow Cake, I proceeded to slowly add details using the green, blue, purple, and gold from the Wolfe Metallix palette as well as Wolfe's Light Green, Sea Green and Saddle Brown. Then it was pretty much detail work from there; going back and forth with my favorite Loew-Cornell & Majestic round brushes as well as the round brush that came with my the Wolfe palette, (It's about a size 1 or even a size 0.5. I just love it for doing fine line work.)

I layered metallic colors over the solid colors to give everything metallic sparkle, and finished off by adding some pearly white highlights and dots in random spots. 

The toughest part of this project was taking the photos. Metallics and sparkles are always hard to photograph properly and do the designs justice, but I think I was able to capture enough detail to give you the idea. :) And yes, I'm still working on my arm tonight as I'm still sick with this icky cold and I'm not feeling too pretty right now. I PROMISE, some face art will be coming in future editions of my Daily Doodles.

Anyway, I am in the process of putting together some special work to submit to the Face Paint Forum Shop as they are looking for Artist Representatives to showcase their products and provide how to videos. The previous doodle photos were not quite up to par as far a quality, so I am bumping up my images with some better shots and better edits of my doodles. 

Also, all of the products I used for today's doodle can be found in the Face Paint Forum Shop... AND they have an AMAZING and extensive collection of brushes and various shaped sponges that I have not seen anywhere else. Of course, they carry my favorite brush brands: Loew-Cornell and Royal Majestic too!

I hope today's doodle finds you well & enjoying your holidays. See you tomorrow with another doodle. 

Baubles, bangles, bubble gum & glitter galore!

-tif-

12/28/2014 - Update on Post from Last Evening

Hello everyone~

Still fighting off this ick of a cold, but I had a nice long sleep last night and I'm feeling a little better. (Once I'm feeling normal again, I will do some face doodles for you all. I just look a little run down at the moment.)

As promised here are the details from from my doodle I posted last evening...

This doodle came about after I saw a posting for a contest by Kaleidoscope Face Painting on an awesome Facebook group I recently joined: FABABA Contests & Likes. Kaleidoscope (from the UK) was celebrating their 8th birthday this week, and held a contest based on the theme of "Kaleidoscope". It is the first face & body art contest I have entered, but was really excited about the opportunity. I'm somewhat of a more "greener" artist compared to the majority of the AMAZING entries, but I thought it was still worth trying out. 

Using the theme of "kaleidoscope" as my inspiration, I decided to do a mirrored/symmetrical design with lots of color. It incorporates a lot of line work, similar to what I showcased on the 26th, but with a lot more color. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, these first doodles I have been presenting have been solely to focus on finding those brushes that work the best for me and getting comfortable with the variety of paints that I have, as they all differ in consistencies as well as how they load on different brushes.

I used pretty much the same supplies and tried and true brushes (Lowe-Cornell & Majestic) as I have in previous posts, and you can find details of what they are and where I got them in previous posts. (Though I'm keeping my fingers crossed I may get lucky and win even 3rd place in the Kaleidoscope contest so that I can try out some of the "Superstar" paints that they endorse and are giving away as part of the prizes.)

Again, here is my doodle from yesterday (left)... and along side of it (right) is how it looked this morning when I woke up. It really didn't rub off much at all, it just softened up a bit. A great testimonial, once again, for those kids who want their face paint to last overnight so they can enjoy it for another day. 

I did find the black lining and detail a bit tedious, and this doodle took longer than my previous ones; but I loved doing it and it's always fun to practice more precise line work too.

So with that, I am off to look for inspiration for my doodle for today. I hope you have enjoyed today's edition & look forward to your comments, feedback, inspirations, etc. or even just a little note to wish me luck in the contest. The winners will be announced on January 1st & I'll let you all know how it turns out.

Baubles, bangles, bubblegum, and glitter galore!

-tif-

_____________________________________________________________
Original Post from Evening of 12-27-2014

Here's the doodle for today. I will be back to post all the details tomorrow. I have the "ick" cold that has been floating around, and I need to get to bed rather than pull another late night. :) I'll be back with another doodle tomorrow as well.

Enjoy your evening!

Keep creating, keep smiling, keep dreaming,

-tif-

Merry (day after) Christmas everyone! Of course now that the Christmas celebrating is about over, I am one of the lucky ones to get sick. Spent most of the day in bed today, but I couldn't leave you followers out there without your dose of my "Daily Doodle"! Thus, I'm here equipped with a large cup of orange juice and git'n 'er dun!!

As I wasn't in the mood for doing something hugely elaborate using a ton of techniques and colors (my brain just couldn't handle that today), I chose to stay simple and give some of my Arty Brush Cakes from Silly Farm some attention; experimenting with alternate ways of using them rather than the typical one stroke technique. (I like to think outside of the box.) I used Arty Brush Cakes: Sparkle Dust, Mermaid, and Purple Rain. And then for my line work I used Wolfe FX Hydrocolor 001 (White). I have to say, the Arty Brush Cakes are really fun. They not only work for wider flat brushes; you can easily use smaller flat brushes as well to focus on specific lines of color. In my doodle tonight, I used sponges and a 1/2" Flat brush. (Brush/Sponge details are below.)

So here's what I started with:

I have to say, when you see the Arty Cakes on your monitor screen, the images don't really do them justice. They were actually larger than I expected, and they are at least 1/4" thick. The consistency is fantastic, and they take very little water to activate the pigment. Using sponges as I did tonight, I was able to make the pigments lay down a little bit more sheer and layer them on top of one another to create a nicely blended background for my doodle. The metallics in these are super sparkly. The bronz-y gold in the "Mermaid" cake is amazing! (I seriously want a cake of just that color - It's super rich and very metallic.) Oh.. and for you peacock fans out there, the "Mermaid" cake lends itself nicely for creating peacock feathers, or Art Nouveau peacock-esque themes too.  

I have used these cakes several times, but the wider flat brushes I have are not very impressive, so I have typically used just bits of the colors from them on smaller brushes, or in today's case, on sponges. (I have flat brushes on my "To Get" list and will share some one stroke doodles with you once I get them.)

Below, you can see the background I laid out with the Arty Brush cakes; first using sponges in blocks of random color, then using the 1/2" flat brush at varying angles to create some interesting flourishes and color variations. Then you can see the final with the white overlay. (I'm almost thinking a pearly white may have been better than the bright white as it would have allowed the background to peek through a little better. But, hey, this is practice and I certainly got some line work practice in tonight!)

In the end, it turned out that my paisley inspiration took on a bit of a "Henna Art" direction. (Henna is on my "To Learn" list; tried it years ago in the mid-1990's but it too has taken off as quite a popular art form since then too- much like face and body painting.) 

3. The last brush is by Liquitex from their Basics line. The brush is called "Bright" and is a Flat Brush Size 8. (About 1/2") I purchased this brush originally for acrylic painting (Dick Blick), but as I bought 2 of them, I chose to use this one for face painting. Not the best brush for doing flat brush work. The bristles like to split a lot and it's not very easy to control. Like I mentioned earlier, I have flat brushes on my "To Get" list. 

I hope you found some, (much, little, any...) of this information and experimentation useful. Please feel free to leave a comment below~ Share your insights, thoughts, resources, questions, tricks... It's always fun to share knowledge. 

Have a wonderful evening & I will be back tomorrow with another doodle!

Keep creating, keep smiling, and keep dreaming~

-tif-

I hope you all out there in "Internetland" have had a wonderful Christmas day. I had a great time enjoying the day with my family and consuming lots (perhaps way too much) of good food and holiday treats. (I wish you could get Egg Nog all year round. Hands down my favorite treat of the season!)

Anyway, as much as it would have been nice to take the night off, I am committed to doing a daily doodle and sharing with you all that I can about my process. (It also keeps me in check; ensuring I get in some daily practice time.)

Today's design was inspired by a holiday towel my mother had hanging in her bathroom today. As it is Christmas, it made sense to do a doodle that had a holiday theme to it. Below is a picture of the towel design along with my doodle version of it. 

Of course I had to have fun doing a lot more embellishing with my version. Though I obviously substituted some simpler line work on the ribbon rather that incorporating the leaf detail... I would have been up all night and I have my Christmas gift of a box set of Stargate SG-1 to get started on. (Yes, I'm a sci-fi geek... I love the Stargate series among others... and don't even get me started on Star Wars...)

Tonight I used all Mehron paint. It is super creamy and smells oh so yummy (like a tropical coconut scent) - if my sugar tooth was desperate enough, I would almost eat one of the cakes... Uh, not really, but if the cakes were edible, I wouldn't have anything to paint with... seriously... Just give me a big glass of ice cold milk to dunk them in!

I got this mega palette with 26 colors (plus 2 each extra of black and white) as a gift from my awesome boyfriend in November. We had been watching them for a while, but chose to wait until after Halloween to see if the price would drop on it... and it did. (I watched this same palette go from $99 to $140 within a matter of a few days as it got closer to Halloween.) He managed to snag this beauty from Amazon for about $75.. so it was definitely worth waiting until after Halloween. 

As I mentioned, the cakes are super creamy and are great for covering large areas. Though I noticed the pigments do not load onto the brushes as nicely as the Wolfe FX paints do. Thus, I was having to fill my brush much more frequently and use a lot more water to keep the pigment smooth, otherwise it got real clumpy, and rather quickly. Certainly not the best option for dong line work, especially when you're constantly having to reload your brush during more intricate line work, or halfway through a spiraling flourish.

I do have to say I LOVE their metallic gold. It is almost like painting with 14k gold. Very bright, and very metallic. The downside is that it seemed to clump even more than the solid colors, so controlling it took quite a steady hand and a lot of patience with all the back and forth between the pigment and my water cup. 

As this case is more of a sampling of all their most popular colors, the cakes are much smaller than normal sized cakes. But I like it because it offers such a wide variety and the kids love choosing colors from it. (It also lets me know which colors are the most popular so when I do go to purchase larger cakes, I can be more choosy of what colors to get. 

As you can see above, the cakes are a nice size. They are bigger than a quarter and about 1/5" -1/4" thick. A decent amount of paint for a sample size. I would think one could get a few hundred faces out of this palette at least; even more if you solely do small cheek designs or similar. 

The photos also show how I really had to work the gold and green cakes to keep them in the consistencies I needed for them to apply smoothly. As I mentioned earlier, I can see these paints working really well for larger coverage or blocks of color; not necessarily the best choice for line work and precise details.

The size of the palette is pretty nice too. It is just slightly smaller than my Mac laptop which is a 15.3" size. And, the case is great too. I just open the case up, and put my individual cakes, rainbow cakes, and one stroke cakes in the well of the inside cover and I'm ready to go. I do wish the cakes were not adhered to the bottom of the case, however; I like to hold on to cakes when I'm using them as it's more efficient than always going back and forth. Eventually, I'll likely get around to peeling them all off the back cover... and possibly write about it if it's worth mentioning in a future post.

The paints themselves are quite opaque when used, but tend to crack more easily the thicker you put it on. (I would try to avoid a ton of layering with these, unless you're using it more sheerly with a sponge as a background color.) I will do another doodle with this palette... I'm sure of that. I just love the variety of color it offers, and its a great palette for someone like me who is still in the beginning stages of building my business. 

So to all you newbies out there - This palette is well worth shelling out $75 -$100 for. In fact, pick up this palette, a couple of one stroke cakes (The Arty Brush Cakes by Silly Farm are super fun!), some Wolfe FX Black & White, and you'll have an awesome start to your professional palette!

Tonight I left the pigment on my brushes so you could see what brushes I used for which color. I again favored my Royal Majestic brushes from Silly Farm, and I used the Wolfe FX brush from Norcostco that I'm still not too thrilled with, but it did lay the gold on more thick than the other brush I used. The thin black brush is the one I mentioned yesterday that came with my Wolfe palette. It is awesome for doing fine line work and I used it to paint the white into my design today. The last one is a Princeton Art & Brush Co. Adjustable Sliding Grip brush (red rubber & clear handle) that I purchased at Dick Blick. I really like that it has a plastic handle rather than wood, so water doesn't affect it. I had originally purchased this to do some acrylic painting with, but decided to save it for face painting instead. It is another favorite of mine and it's great for doing teardrops and swirls too.

I think that pretty much covers it all for today's edition of my daily doodle. Santa was nice to me today and gave me a Visa gift card, so I'm going to shop for some new paint by other brands to test out in an upcoming edition of my daily doodle. If you have any suggestions for paints to try, please share your thoughts and feedback with me. Also, if I can include any other details in my posts, let me know what you would like to hear. 

As always,

Keep creating, keep smiling, and keep dreaming  & I hope your Christmas was Fantastical!

-tif-

26 December 2014- Update: I chose to keep the paint on for the entire night to see what kind of staining might occur when I washed it off this morning. I was surprised to see that the entire design stayed relatively in tact, a nice thing for kids who want their face paint to last into the next day. Also, it washed off super easy. I had no staining from the red or green, which are two colors that are notorious for staining. I used only liquid soap to wash it off too! I'll be back later today with my next doodle! :)

It's Christmas Eve, and I'm home this evening not doing a whole heck of a lot. (We do our big family gatherings on Christmas Day.) So I decided to start something new... Being that I am a recent return to the face painting arena, I have been practicing, watching videos, and trying different supplies.

So, as somewhat of a "newbie" to the grander scale of the professional face and body painting world, I am still testing out different paint brands, brushes, techniques, etc. etc. etc... I thought this may be a good opportunity to share in my journey over the next year or so by providing some fun, entertaining, and delightful "daily doodles". That is, practice designs, doodles, techniques, new tools, etc. or in todays case, it was more me testing out different brushes and finding our which ones I likes best for doing line work, as well as line work practice.
 
Additionally, knowing there are other face painters who are still quite "green" like I am, perhaps providing my daily doodle along with details of the supplies I used and where I got them, may be of inspiration, guidance, and/or even reassurance as you continue down the path of learning and exploring the world of face painting.

So here's what I accomplished today:

Nothing fancy, just playing around. Originally I figured I would just do a line design completely in the green, but I got so excited after I started, I had to keep going and start coloring it all in. Of course, by going and coloring everything in, I sacrificed a bit of the quality of the original green line work.

Here are the brushes and paints I used:

I absolutely LOVE Wolfe paints. They are so rich in color, the black and white are exceptional for doing line work, they are very opaque, and layer well over other colors. It also dries really quick and, once it's dry, it takes a little work to get them to rub off - a great thing for working with kids. I haven't graduated to getting the huge round cakes of this palette yet, I love this small size and the cakes pop out of the palette so you can hold on to the cake to easily reload your brush when working. (I purchased this palette on Amazon.)

The downside of these paints, as far as I have read in other reviews, is that they don't blend as easily because they do dry quickly. This hasn't been much a problem for me and I have found just spraying a light mist on area where you want to blend easily does the trick.  

There are other brands that I will use in future doodles and share my thoughts with you on those. To be honest, I haven't tried anything that I don't like using thus far.

I love, love, love, both the Loew-Cornell and Royal Majestic brushes. They keep their shape very well and are easy to control. They also come to very nice points for doing those extra fine lines or coloring in small spaces. I got the 2 yellow Loew-Cornell brushes and the 2 Majestic brushes from Silly Farm.

The "Soft Comfort" Loew-Cornell brush was purchased at Joann Fabric & Craft. It is a really nice brush though note the size numbering is different than that of their yellow colored cousins. As you can see it reads "Size 2" but it is definitely larger than the yellow 4 and about the same size as the yellow 5. It is a nice brush for doing larger areas or larger teardrops and swirls. I also like using it to make flower petals. The larger handle provides a nice grip and I find it very easy to control.

The Wolfe FX brush was purchased at Norcostco. They are a great store in the Twin Cities area (St. Louis Park) that carries all kinds of makeup from Ben Nye, Wolfe, Mehron, and others. I try to stay away as much as I can because... when I go in to pick up just one thing, I end up leaving with a bag full of stuff! (The sales staff there is awesome too!) Anyway, back to the brush... It's okay. It doesn't like to keep a point very well, so it is better used for filling in spaces or perhaps I'll turn it into a glue brush for doing glitter tattoos. I was kind of surprised about this brush, because the quality of the Wolfe paints are so good. Definitely not my favorite brush of the lot, but it is still nice to have around for doing cheek art. Believe it or not, the round brush I got with the palette I showed you above is wonderful and works great for extra fine line work. Perhaps I simply purchased a dud? Hmmmmm....

Anyway... with that, I will quit for the night. Tomorrow is Christmas after all, and if I am not in bed when Santa arrives tonight, I may find a stocking full of coal. 

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas!

Keep creating, keep smiling, and keep dreaming~

-tif-

p.s. Please post comments on your thoughts if you have used any of these products, or if I can provide you any additional insight based on my experience with using them. 

Thankfully, it has been a slow week... I have been working just about every weekend since Halloween - mostly participating in holiday events. It was nice to have the weekend off too!

I am so very excited about the new year! I already have some birthday parties booked in April and July, in addition to several local summer farmers markets, festivals, and fairs June - October. Though, I'm still getting my chops up to par with all the newest techniques, by taking the time to practice almost every day, I feel that those new techniques are assimilating into my repertoire nicely. Even when I can't practice "painting", a sketch book and markers, colored pencils, and even crayons come in handy. I am also thankful to have the Internet for inspiration; I can't say enough about all the talented face and body painters out there who so kindly share their expertise on websites and via YouTube videos. (I'll post links to some of my favorites in an upcoming blog - In the meantime, see my Home Page for some links to get you started.)

With the new year just around the corner, I think 2015 will be an exciting year for Fantastical Faces. If you're interested in booking a party in the new year, please contact me ASAP. The closer we get to spring and summer, the less availability I will have due to other confirmed bookings. I have pricing to fit almost any budget; thus no party is too small!!! 

Wishing you a Fantastical Holiday Season and a Merry New Year!

Keep creating, keep smiling, and keep dreaming~

-tif-

p.s. Don't forget to add Fantastical Faces on Facebook.