Hi this is Ginger with Circus Kaput! This video is for the beginning face painter or the volunteer who’s going to do some face painting at their event but maybe you haven’t gotten a chance to get all of your supplies together and don’t know what all you’re going to need. This video is for you!

     The first thing that you are going to want is some type of a case to bring all of your face painting supplies in. I like something that’s portable and sturdy. Next, I recommend that you bring a water supply of some kind. I like to use cleaned out plastic peanut butter jars because the jars seal so well that I can bring water with me. That way when I get to an event I’m not looking around for where I’m going to get water from. You are going to want to have some type of a towel with you in your face painting kit. I just wrap the towel up around my water supply and keep it in the bottom of my face painting case. An important item I would recommend for your kit is hand sanitizer. This item is very important. You are going to want to have hand sanitizer nearby to be able to put on a little bit in between kids that you paint and that way you can stay germ-free and hopefully they can stay germ-free. 

     Your face painting kit needs to include a mirror. I keep my mirror in a padded bag to keep it from breaking. You want a mirror that can stand by itself as opposed to something that the kids have to pick up. I also recommend that you set the mirror in a place on your table, positioned in a way that has the kids going over to it and away from their original seat, to look at their face painting after they’ve been painted and not stay in the chair where the next person comes and sits down to be painted. You definitely want a nice standalone mirror that can be protected by some type of padding or by wrapping the mirror in something. After you have wrapped the mirror, put the wrapped mirror down in your kit as well.

     Now let’s talk about your paint. Some of the beginners or volunteer face painters don’t know yet how to purchase professional face paint and professional paint will help your paintings look a lot better. I get all of my face painting supplies at sillyfarm.com. Silly Farm is great to work with. They have lots and lots of choices. For a beginner, I recommend the Kryolan Aqua Color Kit. This is a kit with twelve colors to start out with. This is professional quality face paint. It’s a lot like makeup as opposed to being like paint you would use for crafts or paper. One of these kits costs about twenty dollars and the kit will last a long, long time. If you’re not painting every week it will probably last you as long as a whole year. 

     Moving on to the brushes, when I first started face painting I always felt like I wasn’t getting the right kind of brushes. I felt like the other professional face painters that I would see out in the field had better brushes than mine but what I’ve learned over the years is you can buy good quality brushes for face painting at any craft supply store. What you want them to be is nylon or taklon bristles and I would recommend someone starting out get a variety of sizes of round brushes. Round brushes have a little number on them that tells their size. Anything between a 2 and a 10 would be good for a beginning face painter. The other shape I would recommend you get is a Filbert brush. That’s the little flat brushes. Here are a couple good Filbert brushes, again nylon or taklon bristles from any craft store. That’ll get you a good start with your face painting brushes and in this case I’m going to put these right in the top of my case. Good spot for them. 

     Finally, I would recommend that you have some good design choices to take with you. Give the kids something to look at. This is a little board that I made up with some magic markers and I drew things that I knew that I could paint on someone’s cheek. So, I recommend that you start out with some real simple designs like this one. It will give people something to look at and talk about something colorful and it will help people know where the face painting is at the event so make yourself a little board like this and set it up with your stuff and you will be ready to go.