Painted Personalities Blog

I’ll be out in Crestline Saturday morning at the Norma Livingston Ovarian Cancer Foundation Motherwalk 2008 painting. I’ll be there from 8:00 AM until the race is done. I’ll be painting faces and painting glitter tattoos for cash. In addition to the face painting and glitter tattoos, I’ll have Mike out with the airbrush painting airbrush tattoos too! Part of what we make will go directly to the foundation to help fund research on ovarian cancer.
The color for ovarian cancer awareness is teal. I have teal paint, teal glitter, and teal airbrush tattoo ink!

One of my grandmothers passed away from ovarian cancer in 1999. I have anecdotal stories that other aunts and great aunts may have also died from this. Unfortunately information about their passing away is over 40 years old, and people didn’t talk about that kind of cancer. So I know that due to family, I may be at risk for ovarian cancer. Please come out, see us, participate, and help raise some money for ovarian cancer research!

After I made the previous festival posting, I confirmed another date for a festival.

I’ll be at the Birmingham Farmers Market, for their Friends and Family Festival, this Saturday, August 25th, from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM. The Farmers Market is located at 344 Finley Avenue West, Birmingham, AL, 35204. I’ll be there with face paints, temporary tattoos, henna, and the airbrush temporary tattoos. Come out and see us, and get something good to eat!

There are a number of upcoming festival in the area that Painted Personalities will be painting at.

The Alabama Butterbean Festival is September 1st in Pinson, AL. The festival runs from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.

The Magic City Blues Society will hold their annual Blues Fest September 2nd at Sloss Furnace in Birmingham, AL. This festival will open the gates at 11:00 AM and run through 8:00 PM.

Art in the Parking Lot at Crestwood Shopping Center on September 8th.

The Barber Vintage Festival at the Barber Motorsports Park is October 20th & 21st. I’ll be inside the museum that weekend, so if you have the opportunity, come in! If nothing else, stop by the museum and see all 5 floors of motorcycles that they have on display there.

I’ll be painting faces, applying henna, and painting temporary tattoos at all three festivals. We’re also going to be doing airbrush temporary tattoos at the Blues Fest and the Art in the Parking Lot.

If you are looking at having Painted Personalities be an attraction at your birthday party, please call early! I’m booking dates several months in advance for birthday parties, and festivals are also taking time slots. So call and reserve your times today.

My annual continuing education for this business is just a few days away! The FABAI Convention in Orlando is Thursday through Sunday, with a pre-convention class on Wednesday. I’m going to be taking a class with Emma Cammack on Wednesday. She’s a painter from the UK, who does marvelous work in may different formats. I saw a good bit of her work in the first issue of the new Illusions magazine, and was quite impressed.

Then the convention itself starts on Thursday! Demos and a party on Thursday, then classes and jam sessions on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! There’s a closing banquet on Sunday night that is a fantastic party, and the creativity of everyone there feeds on itself and jumps out at the banquet. Not to mention the vendors of all the different products who are showing and selling new stuff and familiar items.

This will be my 5th convention. It is so worth it! I’m looking forward to seeing the friends that I only see there, and meeting new friends. The folks who are on my email lists who are able to make it are so good to see in person. And the ladies in charge of it all have lots of surprises planned! Marcela has asked me to help with one, and I’m so tickled to be able to do it. I’ll post some pictures from convention afterwards!

Hey y’all. Sorry I’ve been MIA lately. But I painted today in Mountain Brook, at the Norma Livingston Ovarian Cancer Foundation’s Motherwalk. It is one of the Foundation’s fund raisers, and this was the fourth year of the event. Registration for the walk started at 8:00 AM and the walk started at 9:00 AM. I painted some face, did some teal glitter tattoos, and even did a henna sunflower. It was a very good day!

With the change to the new year, it’s time to look at the business and marketing plans and goals from last year. Time to take those goals and see how they may or may not have been met. Then to create goals for 2007.

I have taken a number of classes offered by the Central Alabama Women’s Business Center over the last several years. They helped to get my mind set on the fact that I could have and run my own business. The center and Edith Ingram have been a big help to me as I have made this trip into business. I had the opportunity to take the FastTrac New Venture class that helped me to evaluate the biz and start to work on a business plan. Other classes on marketing and advertising, money, and overviews on legal stuff have been helpful too.

My face and body art email lists, art classes, and conferences have been great, and they have added to my abilities this year. I plan to continue to take classes and attend conferences in 2007. I’ll be attending the Louisiana Living Arts Fantasy Festival March 15-18, 2007 and the Face and Body Art International Convention May 23-27, 2007. LAFFest and FABAIC are holding classes with fantastic instructors and I’m looking forward to learning more about painting from some of the masters, Mark Reid, Jackie Green, Pam Trent, Christopher Agostino, Natalie Simard, and so many more. Cory Conrad is teaching airbrushing class(es) at LAFFest and I’m going to make a concerted effort to add that to my repetoire to have an additional marketable skill for the product mix.

Henna was a profitable addition to the business last year. It helped with festivals, and there were times when henna appointments were the only thing between any money coming in for a month, or nothing. There are some really cool things you can do with henna and temporary tatto inks, or glitter tattoos!

I need to become more aggressive about marketing glitter tattoos to the Birmingham area. Most folks have no idea what a glitter tattoo is, or what it looks like. A glitter tattoo is a temporary tattoo made with medical adhesive and cosmetic glitters. It lasts for several days, but is easily removable with rubbing alcohol or with some scrubbing and warm/hot water and soap. Its fun glitz!