During the summer months, it’s common for women and teen girls to request designs which are on their neck, arms, legs, or ankles rather than on the face. For clients who would prefer a beautiful floral design on the neck, this is a good choice, and can be created with any small split cake they favor.
Materials
• Small split cake (one-inch wide)
• Diamond FX or Wolfe white face paint
• Paradise gold
• 3/4-inch or 1-inch flat brush
• #3 round brush
• #1 round brush
• Cosmetic glitter
• Sponge
• Liquid bling
Tutorial
Sponge a background color such as Paradise gold to create a soft, cohesive color around your design. If you like glitter, you can sprinkle some gold glitter on it as well before it dries completely.
Use your 3/4-inch or 1-inch flat brush to create a simple one-stroke flower with five petals. For this design, I chose my favorite Global split cake, but you could use any colors with good results.
With the same large flat brush, make five teardrop shapes coming up the neck from behind the flower.
Create five more teardrop shapes curving down from the bottom of the flower with your wide brush.
Load your #3 round brush or a lining brush with the darkest color on your small split, or a color from your palette which you feel will accent the flower’s colors. Following the curve of the design, make swirls which come out from behind the flower up the neck and below the flower.
With the same brush and a medium-value color (in my case the blue in my Global split cake), again make more swirls right over the top of the others.
Once more, loading your #3 round brush with the lightest color on the split or another light color which matches the color grouping you’re using, create more swirls over the first two colors.
Finally, use your #1 round brush and Diamond FX or Wolfe white to make the final layer of swirls, dots, and starbursts over the design. I found creating the shape of the flower a challenge because I was working on myself. To clean up the edge and give the flower more visual impact, I also added an outline of liquid bling, which you could do as well.
Beth MacKinney is the owner of and primary face painter for Face Paint Pizzazz in the NW Chicago suburbs. She also writes blog posts for Facepaint.com and articles for Examiner.com as the Chicago Face Painting Examiner.