Banana Hat Girl

Something new to do with those brown speckeled bananas!

Face Painting for Pics

I have a friend who runs a daycare from her home. When I first started out face painting I would give her a call and request to face paint her kids to take photos and get practice. Now she is calling me, which is nice.

So today I painted her kids and it was great! I've attached the new photos.

I originally thought I would use the afternoon to paint some new Christmas faces, and then at the last minute changed my mind and decided to re-paint some old designs. Some of the photos I have are three years old from when I first started. Although, the old photos aren't bad, I've improved so dramatically they hardly resemble the original photo. That leads to all sorts of scrutiny by some children, usually the child with too much time on their hands in line or something.

They look into the mirror and point out how there isn't white here or a swirl there. They whisper and consult their friends or sibling. Hardly any of them dare actually say anything directly to me..but I am amused listening in. I can be amused because I feel confident the face is better than the photo.

I do "warn" or "inform" the children that the face my be slightly different because I've improved, which satisfies 99% of them.

Sometimes being a face painter feels a lot like being a social scientist! Most of the time my job cannot get any more satisfying!

Claresa the Fairy - 15 Seconds of Fame

Last Thursday, I emailed my website info to E.D. Hill at Fox News. She had requested "American Made Toy" sites last August and I finally remembered to do it!

After she announced my website name birthdayfairies.com and said it had some great stuff on it, my website had over 500 hits! Now that may not seem alot to some people, but to fairies it was huge!

It was fairy central here. I really did feel like a Christmas Elf making toys! I even got my 5 year old to help with assembly line treasure stone production, and she is about the size of an elf. I was sick with a throat thing, the top floor looked like a Christmas bomb had exploded and the downstairs looked like, well, Santa's Workshop or Claresa's as the case my be. What a weekend!

The excitement is over now, I am receiving more hits and more orders, but nothing like last Thursday. I am still listed on E.D. Hill's list of safe American Made Toys on the Fox News website.

Fairy Nectar and Decorated Fairy Glasses

Fairy Nectar in Decorated Glasses

You will need:

ice cube tray'
berries, preferably fresh
colored sugar
straws
silk flowers
paper puncher
2 bowls
orange juice, preferably no pulp
cherry or cranberry juices

1. Place fruit into an ice cube tray. Fill with water and freeze.

* As you can see from the photo the ice cubes are a bit pink colored. Iused frozen berries because the store was out of fresh strawberriesand the fresh blueberries, etc. were outrageously priced (this was inNovember in Colorado). I think the water melted the berries and thejuice colored the water. So, if you use frozen berries, make surethey are thawed and rinsed.

2. Decorate your glasses with “fairy dust”.Pour sugar into one bowl and oj into the other. Lay outpaper towels. Dip the rim of each glass into the orange juice,next dip the glass into the colored sugar. The sugar dries really hard, reminds me of those rock candy lolipops.

*I learned that when you put the glasses the right way up to dry, the juiceruns down the side of the glass. To avoid that, place them gently upside down until dry.

3. Add the ice cubes, pour in orange juice to fill about half way full.

* Now this is why is would use no pulp orange juice, the pulp stuck to my ice cubes,didn't look as good as it could!

4. Fill up the rest of the glass with the cherry or cranberry juice,(pour slowly so you can see the swirl of the lighter red juice swirl into the orange juice) it's makes a pretty good effect.

5. Decorate straws by taking the center out of silk flowers. punching them with a round paper puncherand threading them over the top of the straw. You can do as many flowers as you like, they really look pretty.