Easter Line Busters- Tips, tricks and product suggestions to help you speed up the line
Easter is a fun holiday because, for many it's the first glimpse of spring and lots of families are eager to participate in the festive fun. Easter bunnies, egg hunts, and family activities draw large crowds which also can mean long face painting lines.
In most cases I advocate for giving your clients the best face painting over rushed face painting, but the truth is that every event calls for you to use your best judgment. One Christmas, I was hired by a city to do Holiday face painting. The organizer came over before we started and asked if we could stick to small cheek art and 2-3 options as there would be a very large crowd. I pulled out 4 stencils: a snowman, Santa head, reindeer and Christmas tree. At first I was offended and bothered because I felt she was limiting my artistic abilities, but soon after I got started I realized I was zipping through kids. The parents were overjoyed that it wasn't a long wait and they started showing their appreciation by tipping us.
When the event was over a parent came over to thank me. She said that in years past, the lines for face painting was so long she couldn't wait and it made her turn around. But since we were moving fast and loved the designs she waited and her kids were so thrilled. She took my card and hired me for her daughter's birthday. I was so happy because I got to show off my skills at her party and it also taught me a great lesson about giving the clients what THEY want and not what I thought they wanted to see.
With Easter around the corner I decided to put together some tips, tricks and product suggestions to help you speed up the line and make your customers leave with a smile on their faces.
Bling it On!
Making bling and gluing bling to the skin, doesn't necessarily speed up your face art, but once you have it ready, creating a masterpiece is EASY! One of the best parts about bling, is that its a keepsake for your customers and adds a lot of value. I dont recommend it for large or public events, but for private parties where you need to move quick, its a short cut to create really impressive face painting.
If you are someone that loves to make your own bling check out our Bling section for all the Dimensional paints, gems and accessories needed to bling on the fun!
Pink Power to the rescue!
There was a point in time where I felt like stencils were cheating, but then I tried to freehand draw a mermaid on a wiggly 4 year old and realized stencils can be life savers. 10 years ago I created Pink Power stencils to help painters speed up their designs without compromising the quality of their art work. All of the Pink Power stencils were designed with little cheeks and arms in mind, so that you can use them on any size client. They can be used with an airbrush, with a sponge, with a rainbow cake or with your powders to create super fast and creative face painting.
We also have a Easter Pink power set that comes with a fancy and helpful display card or a Easter FACEfun kit that includes a stencils, paint , a rainbow cake and unlimited Easter fun!
Display it!
One year I decided to get fancy and spend $200 on a beautiful printed display. I brought it to my first event and left it there when I packed up. $200 down the drain and lesson learned. After that I never got around to making another large display. After the eye opening Christmas event, I decided to make a Holiday display for each Holiday. I made my display on paper and laminated it, to make it easy to carry and show off, and just in case I lost it I cold just print a second one. Having a themed display has been invaluable. The kids love to see what an "Easter Princess" looks like and boys like the see their options for "Boy Easter" looks like
Our awesome friend Lenore Koppelman the Cheeky Chipmunk shared this Easter display with us and it gave us all sorts of cool ideas.
If you have some spare time in the evening, now is the time to put together your displays to help you move the line and get your customers excited about a SPIDER EGG!
What's a Line Buster?
As face painters we take pride in our skills, and sometimes it's hard to dial back the awesomeness and creativity. As I explained in the earlier blog, there's a time and event for every style of painting. Some events will give you flexibility and freedom to paint at your leisure and go wild, other require speedy painting to make as many happy as possible.
Which is why I have several versions of the same designs. Example 1) Speedy bunny 2) fancy Bunny
99.9% of the time parents won't complain as long as their kiddies got something. Invest a little time and money in products ( like stencils) to help you create short cuts to make your simple designs look like great designs.
Even though the simple bunnies are very simple they still get the job done when necessary.
Here are a few more Line Buster Ideas
There's a video for the fast fun Easter Bunny Princess Crown
Last but not least how to end the line without the tears:
Nothing is worse for business than an unhappy customer. Especially a pint sized teary eyes customer.
Sometimes it feels impossible to end the line without a few angry customers, here are a few tips to save the tears and end the line on time.
1) If it is a public free event ask the organizer for a volunteer to stand at the end of the line and let customers know the face painting line is closed
2) Give out stickers with numbers on them
3) Using a stamp , stamp every kids hand in line and make an announcement that only kids with bunny hands are in cue to be painted. This way its easy to see who is in line and even if they decide not to stand in the full cue to be painted they will give home with a colorful tattoo.
Ending the line on a happy note is good for your brain and also for business. Its important to start practices that are effective so you can focus on doing your best work and not stressing over angry customers.
I hope this blog helps you prepare for the best Easter and busy painting season yet. If you are looking for more Easter Inspiration and video tutorials hop on over to my other blog Paint pal and check out the Easter Inspiration blog along with the amazing FABAtv classes.
I truly appreciate your support of Silly Farm, FABAIC, FABAtv and all my endeavors. I love hearing form you and if there's ever any topics or ideas you want me to cover please let me know I am happy to share.
Happy Painting
Love your friend Heather
