Bringing smiles to the faces of 20,000 kids

THIS BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT SHINES ON

Brought to you by these community-minded organizations because they recognize that
good business is good for everyone:

Supplied photos

The bright yellow Painted Kids tent has become a fixture at local community events, and with it the beautifully painted faces of many smiling children.

At the beginning of Rotary Dockfest in River Mill Park on July 8, Janice Paterson knew she needed to paint just another 52 faces that day to reach 20,000 painted since she started in 2009; she painted 53. The 52nd was a girl named Yara who wanted a unicorn painted on her forehead.

Janice Paterson paints her 20,000th face (Photo: Painted Kids)

It’s an exhausting number to think about, and a milestone Janice and her husband Bill hadn’t considered when they started the venture by chance.

Janice worked in international trade for 25 years, travelling back and forth from Canada to the U.S. On one trip, in anticipation of a visit from grandchildren after she returned home, Janice stopped into a U.S. Chapters store to buy some craft books including one on face painting, thinking it might be fun. She painted the girls’ faces and off they went to a local festival. So many parents asked the organizer where the face painting was that she asked Janice if she’d give it a try the following year.

That was 2008, the year of the global financial crisis, and Janice suddenly found herself laid off and without a pension. She wondered if she could make decent money doing face painting and Painted Kids was born with Janice doing the painting and Bill managing bookings. Their first gig came at a Huntsville Festival of the Arts jazz festival in 2009.

Bill tracks the number of faces Janice paints – at many events she’ll do 50-55, but at the busiest, the Baysville Walkabout, that number approaches 75 – and records all of the names. He used to take pictures of every face and keep them in albums that they brought to each event, but that soon became too onerous a task.

Many of the first children Janice painted are now teenagers and some are in university; they often stop by to say, ‘do you remember me?’

“It’s wonderful to be able to interact with these small children,” says Janice. “We’ve had so much fun with the way some children react when they see themselves.” She recounts a three-year-old from this year’s Canada Day festivities at the Huntsville Legion who ran from person to person to show off his ‘Minion’ face.

“The look on their face is why we are in the business,” adds Bill.

Painted Kids is what keeps the lights on, literally, says Janice, referring to the size of their hydro bill at their home on Bay Lake. But they find opportunity to give back, too. At Hallowe’en, Robinson’s Independent provides space and Painted Kids donates all of the proceeds from facepainting that day to The Table Soup Kitchen Foundation. At other charity events, they’ve donated half of their fees for the day.

They’ve learned a few things over the years, too. Janice has improved at her craft, of course, becoming skilled at transforming faces into perennial favourites like Spiderman or the characters from Frozen while also adding new faces to her repertoire. They enlisted nephews to advise them on faces that would be popular with boys – Creeper from the Minecraft video game or Pikachu, one of the Pokémon. She’s added waterproof paint for her resort gigs so that kids can swim with their painted faces – it can still be easily removed with make-up wipes or baby oil. And Janice now makes jewel clusters ahead of time to embellish the painting. For children who are sensitive to having their face touched – or who just don’t want their face painted – Janice will paint their arm.

Painted Kids is a popular attraction at many events and Bill has learned how to best manage the schedule so that they can paint as many faces as possible. He takes names and slots them into a schedule, telling families when to return so that they don’t have to stand around and wait. And they’ve streamlined the designs they offer, depending on the type of event. Where they’ve been sponsored by event organizers to offer free facepainting, they have a card of about 25 designs that Janice can paint in under three minutes so that she can do as many as possible. When they charge a fee for the facepainting, Painted Kids offers a menu of options at different rates, including elaborate full-face designs with painted eyelids.

It is a physically taxing job, Janice admits. “You have to have a strong back. Five straight hours is hard on the body.” She jokes that Bill wouldn’t give her breaks at first but now she demands them. He has his own heavy lifting to do, though – he sets up and tears down their tent and equipment at every event.

And retirement isn’t far off. Janice says she doesn’t want to be painting faces when she’s 70, so in just three summers she’ll put away her brushes and sponges. That doesn’t mean she’ll leave her creativity behind, though.

“I hadn’t drawn in 30 years when we fell into facepainting. When I was a kid, I always wanted to grow up to be an artist but my parents didn’t have the money,” says Janice. She did save money to later do a short stint at art school but that was cut short when she started a family.

In addition to facepainting, she’s now also a pyrographic artist and is learning how to paint in watercolour, and plans to sell her work online and in art shows.

“Being in international trade was a really good career and I enjoyed it, but when we fell into this it got me thinking I could do some real art,” says Janice. Thousands of princesses, spidermen and minions across Muskoka would agree – and will miss them.