Article from 2021 for news.com.au
When I met my now wife 10 years ago, she was one of the other actors in our community run play. I had no idea her skills learnt in theatre would lead onto my career. “I sell face paints” she explained, absolutely bewildering me. I thought of face painting as those awful liquid paints kids would have their cheeks caked in at fetes and festivals. Crudely drawn butterflies that flaked off and caused irritations. How can you have an entire career around face painting? Is there enough demand for face paints?
Michelle showed me her home shed where she operated her online business. Rows and rows of brightly coloured solid face paints in plastic jars filled the space. Every colour you imagine plus rainbows and glitters and all sorts of things that I had no idea about. Most products were Australian, but she explained some really great brands are imported from Europe. I soon learned that professional quality face paints came solid and were water activated, completely different to what I was used to. Highly pigmented and smooth to apply, these paints were a whole other level.
I started to notice face and body paint everywhere. Not just where you expect it at kids’ birthdays, but markets, festivals, kindergartens and schools. Many commercials and advertisements used body painting to show off their brands and logos. Theatre performers used face paints to transform themselves into animals and circus creatures. I even noticed SFX makeup in movie and television especially for creating gore-y accidents.
Soon, the business outgrew the shed and we leased a warehouse. I joined the business and helped set up a massive public shop. I learned what a Splitcake is, basically a face paint cake split into different colour combos to create an entire rainbow in one brush stroke. I discovered the importance of cosmetic glitter being made from safe plastic, and craft glitter made from aluminium shards. I learned about UV activated face paints that will glow under a black light.
Whilst Michelle loves the pretty rainbows and sparkles, I liked the more realistic side like special FX.
I enjoyed using liquid latex to create amazing SFX designs. Taking our products to cosplay and gaming conventions like comic con and supanova opened a whole new customer reach. Talented cosplayers used our products to create hyper realistic characters with such amazing skill and dedication.
One month, we noticed every day another customer arrived at the shop carrying a sample of coloured wallpaper. It turns out these were makeup diploma students with an important camouflage assignment. They had to match body painting to the wallpaper so the model would blend in. We had a lot of fun matching the exact right colour shades!
Every year we hold a giant yearly sale which is very popular. To discount the products, we upload a giant excel file to our website. This happens in the few minutes before the sale begins. One year there was a tiny typo on the excel file which changed pricing on products, including some items listed at a few cents! Luckily we caught the mistake and fixed it very quickly!
Being a Victorian store we were forced to close to walk in customers when covid hit. This was extremely difficult as we know customers like to see the products in person, often driving hours just to view colours in real life. Face painting professionally became non-existent as all festivals and events were swiftly cancelled. But we soon discovered that parents liked idea of having safe FDA approved face paints at home. We even invented a stay at home face paint kit and Michelle began teaching online workshops via Facebook live to keep customers entertained at home. Although I pride myself on processing orders the same day they are placed, postage was so delayed during this period that sometimes a simple parcel might take over two weeks to get to a few suburbs over!
I could drive this quicker I thought! It was momentous to flip over the open sign and have customers in store again, even with all the extra cleaning procedures and strict mask wearing.
All those years ago when we named the business The Face Paint Shop, we wanted as clear as name as we could be. Yet I still regularly have customers call and ask if we stock face paint. I always laugh! What else would The Face Paint Shop do? Who knew that face paint would end up such a big part of my life! I don't know what the future will hold but I know it will be full of rainbows and sparkles!
