How do I estimate how much paint I will need per festival

Hi everyone. Excuse my newbiness, I am positive my question has been answered somewhere in the forum, but can not seem to find it. We will be doing a county fair this summer and a bunch of other Music Festivals, and gatherings. Currently we are using Snaz 28 fav colors and DFX for linework. In the summer, because of what I have read about Snaz melting we will probably implement Paradise, but thought I would experiment with keeping my Snaz colors from melting by keeping them on a cold water tray and see if that works. Back to my original question. How do I figure how much paint to have on hand per event or per day of the County Fair or festival. I would hate to run out and disappoint. (LOL Mainly myself) Thank you in advance for your replies.

I would just go in with full large pots the lst day/festival. See what you use & it'll help you guesstimate next time. If I remember correctly Snaz is a bit softer and so it depletes more quickly. You could always carry back ups of the colors you use the most, just in case.

Shannon or Perry are more knowledgeable.

Dear Art On You:
I do not use Snaz very often, so I cannot answer your questions regarding using only Snaz. I use Wolfe White and Wolfe White for linework, and then primarily I have been switching over to TAG. I use MAC, DF/X, Kryolan Aquacolor, Kryolan Aquacolor Interferenz, Ben Nye, Paradise (for body work).

Me and my team of two other face painters used one and a half TAG Neon Carnival cakes a day (I wish I had created my own, instead of buying them) and one Wolfe White every three days. I spent $600 in paint before the event for all four of us. I spent almost $200 after 13 days, and I spent $450 restocking after the event was over. This was for a never ending line for six hours a day.

When we got down to the bottom of the paint we all noticed how washed out and muddy, less vibrant the colors were in every brand. I brought in distilled water in large containers, so we would not have to shlep water every time we needed a water change. We all noticed that using distilled water helped keep the paint less muddy. I have switched over completely to using only distilled water when I paint. When I have my own tent in the summer.... my 26gallon jugs are filled with water as tent anchors.... from now on, I am going to use distilled in one of them. (I also use corkscrew dog tie-outs that go into the ground for tent anchors instead of those silly ones that come with the tent.) The water is heavier than the sand bags, and at the end of the event, I water the ground or nearby flowers.

There has to be someone on the Forum who can answer the question regarding Snaz.

Every order of paint I have placed since the summer, I have ordered either Wolfe White or Wolfe Black, in anticipation of a busy summer. I keep purchasing sponges from the dollar store and cutting them up with my electric carving knife into small useful pieces. (The last day of the 18 day event, the three of us used almost 500 sponges. I would like to have more than double that so that I do not have to launder sponges every single night.)

Yes, all the paints turned into a sour cream-like texture in the heat. We placed the paint trays on top of frozen lunch pack bricks, and swapped out our white every few hours from a cooler with freezer packs inside. By the end... we learned to leave the paint securely upright in the cooler OPEN with no lid on it to keep the condensation down. We learned to pack Freezies in our cooler, instead of just freezer packs, because, um, because, we liked Freezies.

We tossed our used sponges into a collapsible water bucket with a little pink soap and some water in the bucket to start. As the day went on, we dumped our used water into the buckets of used sponges. At the end of the day, we dumped most of the water from the buckets for transport home, where I used to re-soap and rinse all those sponges before tossing them in a lingerie bag and washing them on the Sanitize cycle in my washing machine and drying them in the dryer. Now, I take the already soaped up sponges and stuff them into the lingerie bag and just rinse in hot water before I do the Sanitize cycle and dry. I was taking an unnecessary step by re-soaping the sponges that had been soaking all day.

We have a store called "Mark's Work WearHouse" here in Canada, and they have useful items for people who work outdoors in the heat. We all had our MWW neckerchiefs that we soaked in water and wrapped around our necks in the heat. I had a timer that went off an hour before the end of the event, a half hour, and 15 minutes before the end. If there was a large line up, my line manager or myself went out and numbered the childrens' hand from #1 at the back of the line, and then higher numbers all the way up to the front of the line. When we were looking at children's numbered hands, we knew as the numbers got lower, we were getting to the end of our line. And... the last child in line got the most blinged out bejewelled face, or in the case of a boy, he got tiger paws or SpideyGuy Web arms.

You will not run out of paint... you will be forced to be more... creative! We all began to use dark purple and dark blue to do our line work on the day that we felt we were going to run out of black. We got in the paint in the next day and we still continued to use other colors in place of black sometimes.

Happy Painting!

fesspenter wrote:Dear Art On You:
I do not use Snaz very often, so I cannot answer your questions regarding using only Snaz. I use Wolfe White and Wolfe White for linework, and then primarily I have been switching over to TAG.

Fess you must go through heaps of Wolfe White!

I only go through heaps of paint at large events.
Wolfe White is mostly for linework. I use different whites for basework. TAG Pearl white, Kryolan white and MAC white are my bases for larger areas on the face.

I am prepping for a busy summer... and the last two summers there was a Wolfe White shortage.

xoxo

Lisa, reading all that actually scared me!

I got scared before the event.
It was a dream job.
I was paid for 18 days six hours a day.
I was SO worried that I would forget how to paint.
Every day, I was SO tired...
and SO happy.

I always overthink a job.
I have had a Christmas party I have done for two years in a row... for a computer graphics company that creates video games. I was to be painting the children of some very accomplished artists. Oh. My. Gosh. What if I sucked? What if I forgot which end of the brush to use? What if what if what if.
I was fine.
You will be, too.

The very best part of this job occurs when you see the child looking at their transformed self in the mirror, or when they come back to your mirror to admire themselves. Love that part!

xoxox

I hope one day I'll be ready for that, too! When it happens, I'll honour you by eating some turtle wrappers

I thought you already ate them!
I already feel honoured.
Thank you for helping me find my Mark Reid chisel brush. Even though I do not own one.

Now, where did I put my refrigerator?

xoxox

Shiranshoku wrote:I hope one day I'll be ready for that, too! When it happens, I'll honour you by eating some turtle wrappers

It's in my purse.
Refridgerators aren't edible.
Fortunately, the cheese inside is.

Om nom nom.

One question, though. Why is there so much spare change in your fridge?

The peeps here were a great help when I was doing my first fair, basically attendance at the fair has nothing to do with the amount of paint you will need, what you need to worry about is how many people you will be able to paint.

If you can only paint 10 - 15 people per hour then in a 10 hour day you will only paint up to 150 people. That's what you plan for.

I know it sounds simple but it helped me not freak out about having backups of every color and over-buying. Like fess said, have backups of favorite rainbows, white, black maybe red.

D.

I would say buy extra black, white and a couple rainbows. Anything else you run out of you can get creative with other colors.

You have all been very helpful. Denise, what you said makes sense. That does simplify things. Now that you mention it, it seems like a no brainer, but when your brain goes crazy it's like you don't have one. LOL. I will def keep that in mind. I will be buying my first arty cakes and Split Cakes soon to experiment with them. I wanted to get the $145 pallet from Silly Farm but stopped because I was getting all Arty Cakes and didn't know if a few of the Rainbow Cakes to put in the kit would be advantageous, specially for masks and butterflies. We do use the Diamond FX for our linework black and white and love them. Thanx all for your help and valuable info.

You have received some great advice. remember it COSTS us money to make money!I easily spend a $1,000 getting ready for the spring and summer!I would rather over spend a little and stock up and have it on my shelves( it is not like it will go to waste!).We once ran out of a couple of things we REALLY needed and ended up spending a fortune on overnight delivery from Toronto !I never want to be in that position again!