Festival Season!

This was my first summer working festivals and it was such a blast! It was long hard hours of standing and sitting and standing and sitting but it was so worth it for the contacts that I made, the practice and improvement in my painting, and of course the money was nice too!!! Festivals are such a gamble because you never know what the weather will be like, what the turn out will be, and what competition you will have. I still can't believe how well things turned for me and I feel so blessed! At each festival I was amazing how popular face painting was! I guess it shouldn't surprise me, because whenever we would go to a festival before this, that is the first thing my kids wanted to do.

Here I am at my first festival ever, West Fest in West Valley. I was so nervous! It was a good festival to start with though, because they provided the canopies, so I didn't have to deal with that added stress. Plus it was 3 days long so I had time to work up to the busy Saturday. I knew this festival had a huge turnout, so that is partly why I chose it. I had to compete with another face painter who was charging less, but it still turned out okay.

After that I did the Eclipse Premier at Jordan Landing. This was a good event, but I don't think I will work with this vendor again. At first I thought that I was literally going to have to pack up and go home because it was soooo windy!!! My friend Chandelle came and helped me and we had fun together, except we were so busy we didn't even have a chance to breathe much less eat the dinner she brought for us. So we bought ice cream afterwards instead! And then after the event, to really prove that I am crazy, we went and saw the movie at midnight!!! That was too crazy for me since I am clearly not a night person. I did stay awake except for a couple of quick nods at the end, but I still wish I had just gone to go see it the next day with the sane people :)
It is always fun to see all of the crazy (or should I say zealous) fans!

Then came the 4th of July weekend! This year was super gracious to me because it landed on a Sunday, which meant us Utahns were going to celebrate on Saturday AND Monday. Perfect!

So on Saturday I worked 12 hours in Riverton, and it was such a blast. I had a line almost from the moment I got there! I was the only face painter there this time. The good thing about being that busy is that you don't have time to think about being hungry or tired. In the afternoon, my wonderful Hattie (also my babysitter) came to help me. I have hired her to come and do tattoos at several events and she has done so great! She is not afraid to go up and talk to people and close the sale :)

I met some really great people in Riverton and I think I really want to go back next year.
Our cousins came to visit one their way down to the Stadium of Fire, so I painted them.
On Sunday the kids and I spent the night at my sisters so that I could leave bright and early to work in Layton on Monday. This time my nieces came along to help me the whole day, in shifts.

It is funny because each day I would think that there is no way that I could ever be busier than that day, and then the next day I would be way busier! But if I was busy in Riverton, it was nothing compared to how things were in Layton! Wow! I picked this festival because it was closer to my sister, and also because we used to go to it, and it was always packed. But that still did not prepare us for the masses and masses of people that came! At first it was super slow and I thought it was going to stay that way, but then within minutes, we had a line! It was fun working with my cute nieces too. The crazy thing is that this time there were like 4 other face painter there! One was even just a few feet away. I couldn't believe when I would look up and there was a line of like 15 or 20 kids!My sister and brother in law (and parents, and other SIL...) all took care of my kids that day because Jonas was working. It was a really long time too, because I was at the festival for 12 hours, plus set up and take down. My brother in law even carried "the beast" on this back to the car afterwards! What a great family I have! The beast is what I affectionately call my canopy...it's HUGE!!

This time I really didn't have time to take hardly any pictures but luckily, some nice customers sent me this picture later. Aren't these boys the cutest?

A few more things to note and I am going to end this enormous post. In case you are wondering, I purposely scheduled a bunch of festivals all within like a two week period. I kind of wanted to get them all out of the way and then enjoy the rest of the summer. But then I totally loved doing them and kept looking for more later in the season.

Oh, and originally I was excited because by the time our Texas cousins came to visit, I would be done with all of this craziness. But unexpectedly my SIL grandmother passed away, and they had to come sooner! So their trip overlapped with all of this, and I didn't get to see them as much as I would have liked. We made it work though.

And lastly, having such a successful festival season made me so grateful for Jandy's help. If it weren't for her, I know things wouldn't have gone as smoothly as they did. When I told her how well I did, she was so happy for me and said that she was just as excited as if it were her! I don't think a lot of people would have been as giving as she has been, which is just such a testament to her great character. Thanks Jandy!