Art Club Booth - what to buy?

Hello! I'm a HS art teacher and I'm here to get as much info as I can to aid us in our Art Club facepainting booth we'll be working in 2 weeks. We've been doing the booth for the last 3 years and it is pretty profitable but not as good a fundraiser as we'd like. I just kind of jumped into it, not really sure what we were doing!
I've been trying to find the best paint to buy because I'm not sure we've been finding the best deals. We sort of buy whatever we can find including paint from hobby lobby and since its around Halloween, I usually buy up their tubes (although yellow and green is REAL hard to find) but at $1 for 1oz, I'm not sure that's good.
I hear a lot of you use cakes. Are they dry like watercolor and then you wet it with a web brush? Any info on ANYTHING will help! I'm thinking I need to order something ASAP!

I guess it would be better to start with how many people will be working, what you'll be painting, the student's skill levels and what you are trying to accomplish.

It is easier to recommend the best at the best prices.

For example 8 student really can't share one 18 ml cake of white, well they can, but it would be a fiasco. But two students with some practice could do 50 rainbow butterflies an hour with only one rainbow cake, white and black. One sponging the rainbow and one doing the lines. See what I mean.

Give us a few more details and you'll get lots of advise.

Hiya!
I am in the process of setting up for a Kidsfest at my church and part of my responsibility is to assemble kits for the helpers I have to train. At first I was going to buy the 18ml cakes and make individual kits for them, but that would've exceeded our budget and the paints most likely would've sat until next year's Kidsfest (I have my own kit).

What I wound up doing was:
1. Going to the craft store and purchasing a couple of those packages of bead containers, I'll see if I can find a picture of the one I have, it's the hard, thick clear little jar with a screw top lid. They come in packages of 12, 18, and 24...even 6 I think. Since my painters are going to be on separate tables, I got 2 12-packs, something else may work better for you.

2. I acquired some Snazaroo 18ml paint pots. I wanted to stick with them because we were going to be painting children primarily and it is the best brand (in my opinion) to play it safe with as far as allergic reactions and what not. I figured I'd give them 11 colors to work with and the last container could be filled with some blingy glitter for those who wanted to glitz their designs up a bit.

Now the boring math stuff:
The standard 8-color mini kit will paint 50 faces (it's roughly 16ml of paint divided into 2ml paint tabs...)

I assembled the basics (black, white, yellow, orange, green, blue, red, pink, purple, brown, silver and maybe gold or glitter. I took 1 18ml pot and divided it between the two kits I was making. So each kit has 9ml of each color x 11 or 12 pots for a total of 99-108ml. Each one of the kits I assemble is sufficient to paint 330+ faces.

I could have made 4 kits with the same amount of paint and had more helpers, but I was being lazy. I think that this method is the most cost efficient way for your school to acquire professional quality face paints (yes they are the cake form that activate with water, so you'll have to teach the kids not to 'dig in' in the paint...a few brush strokes are all that's needed to pick up sufficient color).

I guess what you really need to know is 1) how many helpers you're going to have, 2) how many colors you want them to work with, and 3) how many face you'll have to paint. With that info, you should be able to figure out exactly what you need! I hope this long winded diatribe helps you even a little...

I've pm-ed you!

So yes, they are a lot like watercolor in that you wet them to activate the paint. The larger face painting masks, like the butterfly, is way easier cheek art (in my opinion) and makes a bigger impression.

You could buy a few small pallets or some larger cakes and split them yourself to make them more practical for your use. The FacePaintForumShop here is nice because you don't get charged for shipping (Yay for Metina!!!!)

I've found that when working with helpers who don't paint a lot, it's good to have a menu. Each year my agency holds a picnic for about 400-600 participants, and Lana and I have become a big attraction over the years, so we now have a team. We picked about 9 faces everyone could do in 3 minutes, and I did a how-to book for each helper... one pic for the base color, second with finished product for the lines. It really worked well! They did a really good job.

Example of the menu... and me, Lana, and our crew:


Example of my how-to. (Design came from the YouTube from Michigan Face Painters)


The Challenge section here has lots of good how-to's, and YouTube has a lot of tutorials.

So like Metina said, give us some more details about your event, and we'll load you up with ideas.