We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Melissa Munn. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Melissa below.

Melissa , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I started face painting when my then 5 year old daughter became obsessed with it. She got her face painted at a bday party and even though I couldn’t really say what the design was, I was struck by how happy it made her. I went home from that party and googled “professional theatrical makeup” and looking at the computer, called out to my husband, “Honey! Wow, this is a whole THING!”

So I bought a Klutz Scholastic face paint how-to book which had a 5 color palette attached to the cover, and jumped in. My daughter would sit still for hours for me. I painted her friends during playdates and painted at her preschool’s end of the year party. Suddenly people that I did not know, were calling and asking me if I could paint at their child’s bday party. I was so shocked! I thought, did I just start a business??

To be a good face painter, you have to paint beautifully and fast. The designs need to make sense. I was slow and sloppy at the start but I loved it. Thankfully, I thought I was really good (I wasn’t) and became obsessed with it. I started to improve and began developing my own style and soon I had so many jobs, I had to build a roster of artists that I could send out. After 15 years, we are averaging 35-50 bookings per week; we offer many other services besides face painting; my, how we have grown since that 5 color palette.

I would paint a sparkly eye design on myself for every party and then soon the mom’s all wanted to “get a little something”…that somehow turned into many corporate events for adults. I would display business cards at each event that I did and was working toward being the go – to company for many NYC kids’ bday party venues. Business was thankfully booming.

At my son’s sixth bday party, I answered my cellphone, feeling like such a bad mom (but hey I’m running a business here) and it was the New York Rangers, looking for a team of artists for the Stanley Cup Playoffs at Madison Square Garden. I was very happy that I answered my phone that day.That relationship really opened up my eyes of what type of contracts my business could bring in. I realized how big it could get. The NY Rangers referred us to the New York Knicks and to New York City Football Club, who referred us to The NY Yankees. So, over time, we started doing bigger and bigger events and more high profile events.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Formerly, I was a performer and toured in Europe singing andf acting in my 20’s. I started painting my face paint obsessed 5 year old daughter fifteen years ago and to my surprise, the whole thing just took off. We live in Manhattan so there are multiple parties and events mostly every day. We do lots of different services at events for both kids and adults.

Our company started out doing face painting for kids, but then quickly added other services as clients asked for them; balloon twisting, glitter tattoos, airbrush tattoos, (recently we created an amazing princess visit department) then we started offering caricature art, magic shows, rainbow hair braiding, and then eventually developed our adult event services; realistic sleeve airbrush tattoos for adults, hair tinsel, lashbars, glitter bars, henna and henna airbrush, etc. We have many corporate clients who book us regularly for happy hour, office parties, holidays, etc., and we do many weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, bachelorettes, etc. It’s a good balance between adults who can sit still…and the magnificent exuberance of KIDS!

We have done body painting, photo shoots, commercials, created designs for a face painting book published by Scholastic/Klutz, who was the publisher of the first face painting book and 5 color palette that I bought when I started painting. I have had the opportunities to teach face painting at international face painting conventions, workshops, and on online platforms such as www.FabaTV.com.

We have done many events for celebrities; I have painted the gorgeous and talented Scarlett Johansson many times and every year we do Tracy Morgan’s Halloween party. Every day is a surprise as to who is going to call and want us to provide services for their event or collaborate on a creative project with them.

For our booking process, we are very detailed oriented and I think that sets us apart…we like our inbox to be filled with emails from happy clients every week so we make sure every single detail is confirmed and organized so there are no surprises on the day of the event. We send a follow up/thank you email to every client after their event- which can be as much as 50 thank you emails per week.Sometimes that is exhausting but it is all worth it in the end, especially when we get all the happy responses in return.

I think another reason our customers love us is because they can feel and see that we love what we do. We love working with the kids so much! We get such a kick out of showing them their faces. It’s such a special job; we call it a “job of joy”.

Though if I am going to be honest, the paperwork is not the joyful part..

We love to connect with people and we are obsessed with our craft; we love learning and trying new techniques and products, we are always trying to upgrade our services, invest in our supplies, upgrade our systems, upgrade our designs and what we offer at our events. The adults can respond just like kids at times. Face painting always just makes everyone so happy. It never gets old, how just a bit of face paint and glitter can make people so happy.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When the pandemic hit, I thought my business was over forever.  And I was sure it would never come back. In March 2020, I was truly exhausted and had an extreme case of frozen shoulder on my right side…so I spent the pandemic rehabbing my shoulder and dreaming up new services. When people began to gather again, we were there, all masked up and ready to go. It was tenuous at first; clients would have us test outside their event and though it was fun to get back to business, it was also scary to gather. We picked and chose which events seemed lower risk and slowed our painting process down in order to rigorously clean all our supplies between guests. We tried many different methods and steps of sanitation to figure out what was best. When Covid numbers rose, we would go on hiatus, it felt too scary to be in gatherings right in people’s faces. Slowly, slowly, as things opened up, we started working more regularly. We started implementing all the services I had dreamed up during the pandemic, the princess visits and rainbow hair braiding and fairy hair. Now we are back and busier than ever, all the new services really brought us to the next level we were hoping to get to. Now it’s time to dream of what is next!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

When I started my business, it was just me. As I began to get more and more bookings and creative projects, I found myself trapped at my computer all day until midnight, responding to all the daily client inquiries, finding out which artist wanted to do which event, sending contracts and deposits and balance due invoices and confirming both my artists and my clients for their upcoming events until that work was complete. It felt nonstop!

Much more would come the next day, so I learned; in order not to miss anything, I had to respond to each inquiry right away, on the same day I received it. Around midnight or 1 am, I would finish my work and only then would I be able to move on to the fun stuff; creating designs for theme parties or sporting events or learning a new type of design or service, preparing designs to teach at a convention, etc.

This really contributed to burn out. Artists need creative time to work and play and it should not be a time when they are already completely physically exhausted. I realized that I should spend more time doing the creative processes and hire someone to help me with all the admin. As a freelance artist and entrepreneur, it was hard to spend that money but I finally realized that to create longevity, I needed to hire the right, detail oriented people, delegate to them and trust them. It has been so worth it. We are now up to 50 bookings per week most months, and there is no way I can handle that volume by myself, it’s just no longer possible and thankfully, I can finally see that.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.FaceArtbyMelissa.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/faceartbymelissa?igshid=MmIzYWVlNDQ5Yg==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FaceArtByMelissa/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/face-art-by-melissa-manhattan

Image Credits
all photos taken with my iphone :)