Face Painting and Glitter Art Supplies

Hey and welcome to today’s blog post (more of a list)!

Below is a list of suggested suppliers that I use and would recommend for face painting and glitter purchases.

The majority of these suppliers I use myself. There are a couple on here I haven’t purchased from, but they come very highly recommended from other face painters. (Please note none of these are affiliate links, they are just suppliers I love).

General face painting suppliers

Magic Box face paints– Magic box has excellent customer service and is one of my favourite places to shop!! I always find what I want as their selection of paints is MASSIVE! They also supply glitter (including bio) & tattoos, large custom one stroke kits and palettes, special FX and loads more! Pop over to their site and have a mooch.

Face paints direct Another great store with an excellent selection of paints and supplies.

The Face painting shop– The Face Painting Shop is another great one stop shop for all your supplies. 

Dauphines- I haven’t shopped at Dauphine’s for a while now, but they definitely need a mention as their customer service is so great! I still remember a call I had 5 years ago with a gentleman that worked there. He was exceptional and really brightened my day.

Yorkshire Face Paints– I placed my first order last night! I have only ever heard amazing things. Lots of painty, as well as bling supplies and double sided medical tape. Donna also does some ace tutorials on her Facebook page too.

Festival Glitter

Rainbow Sparkles– Their glitter gels are to die for! They are heaped full of sparkles. They also do some amazing coloured fine glitter too which is great for tattoos. Rose who sells rainbow sparkles really knows her stuff and often does glitter demos on her Facebook page.

LG London– a massive selection of festival, fine and bio glitter with bling added in too, all at very reasonable prices. Definitely the place to shop if you are putting together a glitter bar.

Cazi’s Crafty Creations– Has just started selling her own glitter pots and mixes. She is adding bio glitter to the catalogue soon!

Bio Glitter

Glitter Lution The original bio glitter. A massive selection including different sizes and mixes.

Bespoke One Stoke Palettes

Sally- Ann Lynch Sally’s palettes come in an array of original and beautiful colours. I believe if you have a specific request you can get in touch with her to order.

Cazi’s Crafty Creations– Cazi has recently started making bespoke palettes, and people on the painty Facebook groups are loving them. Her main palette includes all the one strokes you need to get started.

Practice Boards

Sally-Ann Lynch- Loads of sizes, good quality and great to use as a display. Sally does a large A2 board with 12 faces on that is excellent for this.

The Fancy Fairy Boards- Great and affordable practice boards. I often decorate my plain A4 boards and use them as signs that are part of my display.

Cases and kits

Craft N Go Craft N Go are awesome paint stations made specifically for face painters. They are imported from America and are on the pricey side, but man they are beautiful, sturdy cases in amazing colours!

Fantasy Face Paint Case- I haven’t had the pleasure of using the Fantasy face paint case, but I have heard great things. Emma and her husband who supply the cases have great customer service and reply quickly to queries.

Glitter tattoo suppliers

Glitter Body Art Online Their glitter tattoo stencils are the cheapest I have found. They have a huge selection of glitter including festival and bio glitter at awesome prices. All my orders from them have always arrived quickly and well packaged.

 

Face Paint Tribal Basics

Hi and welcome to this weeks ‘paint with me’. This week’s focus is going to be tribal. When it comes to tattoos tribal is everywhere! Down legs, and arms, making up intricate large pieces. It looks so simple and so complicated all at the same time.

Coming from someone that is obsessed by swirls, you think I’d have attempted tribal well before now, right? Other than a half-arsed attempt as a teenager to cover my friends back in swirls (which may I add did not look as good as I had imagined), I haven’t really tried it much before, so this week, I practiced, and practiced (yep back to that word again, we all have a love/hate relationship with it!). Some turned out pretty good, some not so good, and as always; I show the good and the bad.

There was a particularly good video on YouTube by SparklingFaces, and some inspiration I found on Pinterest that really helped with tribal painting. (If you’d like to follow my tribal board you can check it out here: Cosmic Faerie’s Pinterest-Tribal board.

Then out comes to brush and the black paint! Ooooo but what brush is the question? I tried a few this week; The La Corneille Flora , the Loew-Cornell yellow handle number 5 and a flat ½ inch brush. The one I used was Royal and Royal and Langnickel which is a cheap one I picked up until I can afford a lovely one from The Face Painting Shop. The favourite was definitely the La Corneille flora. This is a brush a purchased and was taught how to use by Juliet Eve from Façade academy. You can check out her awesome training classes here.

As you can see from the video below, the brush holds paint well up close the the ferulle, so keeps going for longer (which is handy when you are getting carried away with the curly swirlys), it is able to produce a very fine line, but also a very thick one. Excellent for tiger stripes when you need thick to thin (abbreviated in the face paint community as TTT). This brush is excellent for creating the thick to thin C’s and swirls you need when creating tribal. As mentioned above I did test a round brush, which also worked well, but it didn’t have the contrast that the flora had.

Fancy picking up a flora brush? You can do so here: Flora Brush

As mentioned, I also tried and ½ inch brush. I had this bright idea that I could get some lovely one stroke colours, looking all blended and tribally. The verdict was: I couldn’t. I believe with a bit more practice and brush control that I still might be able too, but I still prefer the flora. Quick and easy and I can add highlights too. Here are my ‘attempts’.

I found when using black as the base colour and highlighting with white it was muddying and going wrong, like the one below (although I managed to do one that looked okay). I am pretty terrible at highlights, and normally prefer to just use dots.

Saying that, I did try some tribal designs in metallic colours with highlights, which I thought looked pretty effective.

This one is Superstar’s (Fab in the USA) ziva and Tag’s pearl blue.

I would say play around with colours. There is no excuse not to practice, you don’t have to haul all of your face painting things out. One brush, one colour and some water and you are ready to go!

You can also integrate these in to your designs. The one below is inspired by Cameron Garrett tribal monster.

I also tried UV one stroke and tribal. I used the pink, orange, and yellow side of a the DiamondFX Neon Rainbow split cake, and a 1 inch flat brush to make a C shape around the eye. I then painted the tribal design on top of this with a normal black. The UV glows really well, behind the dark tribal design.

Tribal desings are really popular, so they are ace brilliant to use on teenagers and as part of graffiti arms.

Check out Mike Tyson’s tattoo. It seems that this design is quite popular, and images of it painted on in various ways crop up all over the internet.

Mike Tyson image from here

Once you get the basics down you can experiment with colour, add gems and glitter and really get some ace effects, brilliant, quick and colourful for the festivals!

Cosmic Faerie