Professional Development attempt 1

My most recent paid work is as a face painter. An old school friend came across this wonderful job last Christmas to work along-side the Santa & elves in a nice department store so I joined her wondering if I could get thru without anyone noticing what a novice I was.....need not have worried, make kids happy and their parents think you are wonderful regardless of the quality of your work (not that I was bad -just new at it).
Given that we had to buy a painting kit the 2 of us decided to go it alone and Cheeky Cheeks Face Painters was born. We have been going almost a year now and have been more sucessful than I ever thought we would be on free advertising only.

This past weekend was our first attempt at professional development. We discovered very late ( ie Monday) that the Australian Body Art Carnivale was on in the small but crafty little town of Eumundi (famous for its wed/sat markets) just over 1hours drive north. Having recently missed the 1st Wonder Down Under face & body art convention in Melbourne, I was especially eager to see other artists at work, see new products and learn a bit too. Given we could only go for one day we chose Saturday as that was the Face painting competition and there were technique workshops happening too as opposed to Sunday when the body art would be done (yes more spectacular but we face paint, so it seemed right).
Unfortunately this was the wrong decision: after searching for some sign of this event we finally found a few tents at the side of the markets only to be told we couldn't do a workshop -no they didn't seem to be full, they wanted us to enter sundays comp which we couldn't/didn't want to (we don't do our 1st body art in a comp!) -so they missed out on our fees. But never mind there would be the Face Painting to watch........well there was but only 7 entrants -the best 3 faces in my opinion are shown here as almost finished works.......

I think with some preparation we could have both held our own had we entered. The theme was the 'Natural World' which gave a huge scope -I would have loved to see the body art interpretations.

SO while our professional development had fairly well stalled we did meet some sellers of some nice paints which we purchased. We haven't been able to see many of the other paint brands so that was a plus for us. One of these sellers had just been down to the Melbourne convention and said it was wonderful and that the rumour was it might come up to Brisbane next year -fantastic news for us!! We also saw the resident market artist at work and agreed we were much better than her & she was charging $5 a face (but these are exy markets)!

For the rest of the morning we roamed the markets -child & manchild free- a much missed experience for these 2 mums and we did enjoy it to the full (till my feet were killing me). We sampled food, chatted to talented stall holders and made a few purchases, so it wasn't a wasted day at all - just not quite the day we'd planned......

We have the web address now and will be ready for next year!