Your Business Name?

I am recently official.
Making Faces Parties Inc.
There were a lot of rejects but the work is coming and I thought this was good enough to get going with the branding. I haven't released the webpage yet so the links you see aren't active.https://i.servimg.com/u/f83/13/93/45/52/making11.jpg I haven't figured out how to make the picture show up here, sorry.
Anyway it's all a work in progress right now- I am lucky to have supportive friends help me pull this together.

JBax wrote:My business partner came up with PartiGras. Sort of a take on Martigras masks and fun. I'm horrible at naming, so we went with it. (although I tend to think of Fat Tuesday on Burbon Street, not exactly rated G). I came up with the logos, one I painted my daughter a masquerade type mask, the other is a clip-art style jester and I added some eye art swirls with photo shop. It helps I'm married to a photographer.

It could also sound like "party grass", not quite pg either.. But with the right presentation, people will get the idea =)

Well, I started doing research online about face painting (mostly to get ideas on what/how to paint) and read that kids (and adults, too) enjoy dressing up and becoming someone/thing else and "looking at themselves." So that's why I first came up with "LookatmeEntertainment!"

But.....then I had a dream and it came to me, "Rainbow Painting." The significance of this is it was my father's house painting business name - he passed away about a year and a half ago and I've been lost with out him. Being an only child he and I were very close. So this is my way of "carrying on the family business" (so to speak) and keep him as close to my heart as possible.
(I love you, dad!!! )

I may have difficulty registering the name (and for tax purposes I'll have to be certain to differentiate between the two - my dad wasn't too happy about sharing his money with the gov.) since someone else has his business name still. We'll see......

I know that the rules here are that you can use the same name as someone else, as long as you are not in the same business. But there has to be a good reason for it, not just to try to get costumers because you take the same name like someone famous.
So it would be okay to name your business for example Nike, if that was your name, and you did not make clothing.

Thanks Lone-wolf!

BTW I have ALWAYS had an affinity for wolves so your design and name to me is just amazing!

LoneWolf wrote:
It could also sound like "party grass", not quite pg either...

Too funny! I could branch out to different departments... or maybe not.

I just found this thread LOL I came up with A Little Bit Of Bling because when I started out, I'd often mess up something on a face and quickly cover it up with a little bit of glitter or liquid bling. One day someone asked me what do I do if a face doesn't work out as planned, I just said 'A little bit of bling solves everything!" And there it was.

I've had 'CATZ Marketing' for over 20 years which is an acronym for 'Creativity A to Z' because I have so many creative interests. I started it as a way to slow down the requests for 'free' graphic design work. Now it was my 'business'. So when I got into face painting last year I decided for consistency's sake I'd keep CATZ and add Faces. Now I'm thinking of adding 'and bodyart' since I'm having fun with that too. The main thing is to build on the reputation I've already got out there and not have to start from scratch with the marketing. I have three business cards LOL. One for graphic design, one for wedding planning/instructing, and one for Face and bodyart. They all look similar though with the same fonts and style, just different colours.

C Me Expressions. My Name is Carey Metcalf Emory. CME are my initials. So my daughter and I came up with C Me Expressions.

amoungst my friends, i'm "the girl with all the glitter"

so in face painting - fortunately - I get to use alot of glitter!
Sparkling Faces is just fuel for my fire!

I don't have a big exciting story, but my business name is Evolutionz Face & Body Art.......... story is I wanted the phrase Face & Body Art in the name + I like to end stuff in "Z" and from that I came up with my name.

I when I first started I used Mel's Face Painting in Baltimore. At some point, probably when I moved back to Connecticut I started using Painted You. At the time I thought it would be funny to end emails, etc. with
Melissa Bertrand
Painted You
I don't love the name, but don't really dislike it either. No one has made fun of it that I know of anyway (and I am sure my friends wouldn't hold back) so I suppose it's OK.

We got ours simply enough ... Billy & Betty = B&B_Entertainment. A search of businesses through our city/county websites show no other business with the same name.

Funny you put it that way. My husband is a photog, so we thought about combining and doing 'B squared" like a b with the superscript 2 for our last name: Baxter. Yeah... I don't ever remember how to do one of those, and I don't like sharing anyway

It's tough picking a name. I want to do a lot of body art as well as facepainting, so I wanted a name that can be more grown up as well as good for kids.

We went with the generalized "Entertainment" as we currently provide Balloon Creations, Face Painting, Airbrush tattoos, and magic. If ever the winds blow our way, and we move into a house (instead of an apartment), we will probably be investing in a couple of bounce houses, and other party supplies like tables, chairs, popcorn machine, sno-cone makers, etc on a limited scale. You never can tell when the "get-it-all here" service will be the icing on the cake to seal the deal, right?

Mine is Create-A-Face and unfortunately there is another face painter with this name. I didn't know this until after I ordered all my business cards, signage and business license. Because I was inexperienced with the business, all I looked for were face painters in my state and states neighboring mine via the Yellow Pages and google.
I found out about the other painter when I went to register my site and it was already taken....
The upside is that I'm in Massachusetts and she's in Maryland. If we were closer, I definitely would have changed all my business info out of respect for her, but I think with the distance it's is okay since we are not in the same market area.
Lesson learned though.

CreateFaces wrote:Mine is Create-A-Face and unfortunately there is another face painter with this name.

What about the domains Create-A-Face-Here.Com or Create-A-Face-Painting.Com

Using the domain .Com makes it easier to find you and you can still use 'Create a Face' as your business name. And if you have the domains you can link them to your site.

Just a little midnight thinking, I gotta go to bed now.

Jenny

mine is not so interesting...i believe there already exists a michelle's fantasy faces...but fantasyfaces.nl wasn't taken..so now mine ...decided to put my name in front of it...so...

I started off as Ling Ling the Clown & there is a story behind that. When I was a kid it was a mean name stuck to me by other kids(I hated it for some reason... or maybe it was just hating the mean kids:-) Anyway, when I picked the name I thought of wanting to use something that was ment to tear me down & use it for good. I've switched to Amazing Face Painting by Linda about a year ago. I never felt right advertising as a clown when I've had no formal training & all the training I've persued has been for face & body art.

Mine is Daydream Designs. No cute story behind it though.

Just Jenny wrote:

CreateFaces wrote:Mine is Create-A-Face and unfortunately there is another face painter with this name.

What about the domains Create-A-Face-Here.Com or Create-A-Face-Painting.Com

Using the domain .Com makes it easier to find you and you can still use 'Create a Face' as your business name. And if you have the domains you can link them to your site.

Just a little midnight thinking, I gotta go to bed now.

Jenny

I like my site name www.create-a-face.net, I just was trying to say registering my domain was when I realized there was another face painter named Create-A-Face.

The first address I tried to register was createaface.net (no hyphens) and got the response that it was already taken.

That's when I typed the domain directly into the address bar and saw it was a Maryland face painter. I felt bad, but again, with the distance between us and not interfering with her market area (not to mention the investment I had already made in my business cards and signage,) I decided to stay with my business name and just added hyphens to my domain name.

Years ago I started performing (sideshow and circus, mostly dealing with fire) so my company was called Pyromorph, and it served as a blanket entertainment company.

I'd been doing henna for years just for kicks when the members of my bellydance troupe wanted to bring in extra money at festivals, so I suggested doing that. We set up the tent to look very harem-like, and coupled with our fusion dance, my fire dance and the henna, I started Extreme Hareem.

It was purely accidental that I got into body/face painting. I used Reel Creations Stains to add color to my henna, and sometimes liquid Mehron. At one Ren Faire the face painters pulled out suddenly and people were asking us if we would do paints as well. We figured why not.
As more and more people got into henna, the market was saturated here so we focused more on faces and bodies. Extreme Hareem simply didn't fit so now we're Lynne Couillard's Artful Body. No idea where it came from, it just hit and stuck.

Here filing is pretty simple, you just get a DBA for $30 and 3 forms. If I were to make it an LLC (next step) that costs more but a lawyer does a wide spread search for it. I actually worked with a tattoo artist who's well known to figure out if anyone else has it...and so far nothing has turned up so I'm pretty confident with it.

I can only WISH licensing was only $30! It's closer to $200 here.

Wait... Licensing... is that the same as a "Doing Business As" ? That's all I have to file here as a sole propriotorship, and I think it's $20 at the county clerk's office.

You know, I'll have to check on that. I thought that the DBA fee (also $20) was an additional charge to the licensing fee. I don't know if it would be sufficient for doing business or not.