How It All Began

One question we're asked frequently is, "How did you get into face painting?" I usually keep my answer brief, but here's the real story...

So, my little sister, Dawna, is moving to Colorado for the summer, and hoping to find some face painting work while she's there. Tonight when my family was out to dinner for another sister's birthday, I told Dawna that there is another company in Colorado named "Fantastic Face Painting" (for the record, our official name is Fantastic Face Painting of Utah, so no need for confusion.) Anyway, I told my older sister Doreen that this other company must not be very creative in coming up with a name, and she immediately laughed.

It's an inside joke, because our family business (sisters, mainly) began back in September of 2010 with what we thought would be a one-time face painting booth at our hometown fair (Brigham City Peach Days). Doreen was filling out the application for a booth and asked me what we should put for "company name." We decided on Fantastic Face Painting, because (I told her) why waste time trying to come up with something clever when no one other than the Peach Days committee would ever read the name?

Here we are, six years later, and we hope lots of people hear our (uncreative) name. The road to that first face painting booth began the year prior when Doreen painted her children, nieces, and nephews at the Peach Days parade, (including my son, Jacob, above, and my daughter, Leila, below). When I was stopped by several people, asking where we'd had the face painting done, I realized that Peach Days had no face painting booth, so maybe we should give it a try. Since both Doreen and Dawna were naturally artistic, I figured they could do the painting and I could manage the booth.

I dove into research and I remember telling my sisters, "Guys, face painting is like...a whole world." Who knew there was so much to it? We practiced our skills on our own kids, our neighbors' kids (bless them) and on each other. We learned through trial and error, and we went into that first fair the following year pretty naive. But, we discovered how much fun face painting was, and more importantly, how much fun it was to do it together, and we've never looked back.

We run our business much more professionally now than that first "Fantastic Face Painting" venture, but we still love hanging out together in a fair booth, and sharing pictures with each other of our latest works of art. Sister Friends Forever.