Getting The Most out Of a Kid’s Party with Face Painting

All children love to dress up. They love to make believe that they are princes, princesses, tigers, lions – anything a parent can name, a kid wants to pretend to be. A children’s party is the perfect place for the urge to make believe to achieve full expression – and there’s no better way of doing it than face painting.

Face painting, effectively, is dressing up for the face – only better, because it’s done by a professional make up artist and so guaranteed to look amazing. When a party company (like UK based Froggle, who run all sorts of kid’s bashes, from back garden events to whopping great jamborees) is hired to take over the day, the parents get to relax: they don’t have to apply the face paints, which of course means they don’t have to worry about making a “bad” job and having their kids sulk at them. 

The ideal thing about face painting is that it adds a hugely special feel to a party, without damaging clothes, over-exciting everyone, or taking ages to get off. A professional make up artist will use non-smudge, impermanent make up, particularly suitable for children, which can’t be smeared all over clothes and walls but washes off with ease when all the fun is finished. Each child gets to choose for him or herself who or what they want to look like (which avoids disappointment and squabbling) – and the make up artist works quickly and efficiently, so no child is left squirming in a seat for too long.

Face painting is usually as successful at kid’s parties as a magic show or a clown. In many ways, its’ effect is similar to a magic show – as far as the kids are concerned, when they look in the mirror, they have been magically transformed into any one of a number of wonderful things. Superheroes, animals, fairies, wizards – a few strokes of greasepaint and their wildest fantasies have been made reality! The look on a child’s face, when they see their enchanted transformation for the first time, says it all. It’s a gift even the parents can take away with them.

Face painting has the same kind of trickery as a magic show, too – only from a slightly different angle. It manages to trick kids into thinking they’ve been allowed to run riot – when in actual fact, all that’s happened is that someone has drawn a picture on their face. That’s excellent news for parents, for whom the aftermath of a child’s party can often be as traumatic as the event itself – acres of streamers to sweep up, food everywhere, a general air of destruction. With face painting occupying all their attention (and, of course, the subsequent obsession with ensuring nothing damages their newly daubed visages), kids often “forget” to run riot – they end up more fascinated with their own faces, and each others, than with trashing the place.

Face painting is, of course, just a part of a whole party event – but done right it can be the focal part, and it’ll certainly be the thing the kids remember most. Included as part of a full party package, it can make for a remarkably stress free day – and hundreds of adorable photo opportunities!