What makes this the most magical Fairy face paint design? This design is whimsical enough for children, and elegant enough for teens and adults too!
The breathtaking rainbow colors of Leanne’s Happy Pixie Fusion palette make the white linework pop in a beautiful way. Learn to combine vibrant colors, intricate texture, beautiful layered flowers, and crisp flowing lines by following along with this helpful step-by-step tutorial.
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Materials used:
- Petal shaped sponge (pink Fusion brand)
- Sweet Dreams Butterfly big splitcake found in Fusion – Leanne’s Happy Pixie Palette
- DFX Dark Blue (Ink Blue from Superstar would be even better)
- OOH stencil – S14 – Flower Mandala
- 2 Finger Daubers
- DFX White
- DFX Azure – (Alternative: Fusion Deep Teal)
- ¾ Art Factory Flat brush
- Flora Brush (best match: Sparkling Faces “Flora Brush” size 8)
- Round Brush no. 2 Sparkling Faces -(Alternative: Blazin’ Brush Round no. 2)
The right tools make all the difference for fast, easy face painting! Check out our Face Painting Supplies Guide to learn the best materials and where to get them.
Step 1
We start our design by moisturising our sponge and split cake using a spritz water bottle. Depending on how fine the mist is, you will need 1 to 3 puffs on each.
Then we load our sponge having the yellow paint on the pointy side and the purple one on the large side of the petal.
We will first apply the paint on the eyelids and only after that on the forehead! The trick here is to get rid of the excess paint on the larger areas.
At the end, the sponge will have a slightly drier paint consistency and it will be so much easier to control in order to obtain that specific shape of a wing oriented towards the top of the head (check out the graphics picture at the end of the article to see the location of the Top Focal Point).
Pay attention to the natural shapes of the face! The eyebrow tends to connect naturally with the outside corner of the eyes in the shape of an arc. We do not go outside that imaginary arc with our design’s base. Be sure to also allow enough empty space in the middle of the forehead!
Step 2
We are loading our finger dauber with the dark blue and create a triangular shape above the Central Focal Point.
This shape should not exceed the horizontal half of the forehead – if the forehead is narrow, we reduce the size of our triangular shape – smaller face – smaller brushes – smaller elements.
You can skip this step if you use a blue splitcake for the 4th step. The blue splitcake would need to contain 3 colours: dark blue, light blue, white.
Step 3
We are loading our second finger dauber with waxy white carefully. We will need a sticky to dry consistency for this step. The dry paint will allow us to fade out our stencil pattern.
Once our tiny sponge is loaded, we will start stencilling, keeping the stencil fixed with one hand and tapping on it with the other hand (I always say “Tap, Tap, Tap!” when doing a stencil).
Usually it helps to ask the child to push their forehead towards the stencilled area – ensuring the stencil will not move before we are ready.
We start from the centre to cover that part while we have plenty of paint on the finger dauber and then fading the edges towards the Central Focal Point.
Step 4
For this step you can load a flat brush or an angular one with a blue split cake – I prefer the flat brush because there are no brush strokes that would be easier done with an angled brush.
I wasn’t happy with the blue one strokes I had, so I added the light blue on the middle part of my flat brush (using another brush) and dipped the bristles from one corner in the creamy consistency white. The other corner remained just wet with no colour on it. Exactly as we have our brushes in the ghost one-stroke technique.
- With the brush loaded, we are creating our first large petal – its width should be a third of the empty space left on the forehead after sponging the rainbow base. We need this size in order to have plenty of space for the other strokes.
- While our first stroke dries up, we are creating the side strokes: on each side or our big petal shape, we’ll paint an ‘S’ shaped stroke on the top and an ‘n’ shape stroke a bot lower – check out the image. These two strokes are super similar to the ones we do for the butterfly one stroke edge.
- We get back to our centre. We have the big petal. We need a medium one over the big one and a small one (‘u’ shape stroke) over the medium one. For each petal layer, we go lower, towards our Central Focal Point – this way we are creating depth between the petals and it will result in a 3D flower effect. I like to call them open petals.
- Once our open petals are dry, it’s time to close them – one by one. First it’ll be the small petal – we paint a ‘u’ shaped stroke to close it. Then we close the middle petal and finally, the last stroke will be the large petal.
Step 5
Next, we are loading up our flora brush with creamy consistency white. We will remove the excess paint from the tip and load with our second colour: light blue.
We will repeat the process in order to load our brush with the third colour as well: dark blue. This technique is called triple dip.
With the flora brush loaded, we will paint 3 to 5 petals on each side: starting from the outside corner of the eye and going towards the nose. The dark tip of each petal will point towards the outer corner of the eye.
Step 6
Our final mandatory step is the linework. A combination of teardrops and dots – all following directions guided by the focal points.
- First line will be a thin to thick to thin line and it will hug our ‘n’ shaped side stroke. We repeat each element on the other side!
- Our second element is the longest teardrop – following our wing base and going towards the top focal point.
- Third and fourth lines are the connected teardrops – two loops decreasing in height and connected to our longest teardrop. The last one is almost touching the eyebrow.
- Fifth teardrop will be a reversed one: we start from thin. It is a fairly short one and it will be placed right above the natural arc of the eyebrow. From it, we flick our brush in a down motion, bringing its end towards our first triple dip petal.
- Sixth line would be the eyelid one – thin to thick to thin – following the natural curve of the eye. It can be skipped if you don’t have enough control just yet.
- Final touches are the dots and some tiny teardrops – see in the image.
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Step 7 (optional)
I only added this step so I can talk about glitter. I would avoid adding glitter to this specific design. There are already plenty of details and colours, so the glitter would just unnecessarily load our design and it would be too much.
If you really want some sparkles, I would recommend using the glitter mark – squeezable liquid glitter that can be applied in a thin line.
Lips can be painted of course, matching one of the colours already present in our design. Don’t forget to use disposable wands when painting customer’s lips!
And we are done! We created a spectacular Fairy design that will be the main attraction at your next event! Get creative and try other colour pallets as well!
This design works even with a monochromatic colour combo! It can be transformed into a frozen design in no time just changing the stencil into a snowflake one and switching the colours to a frozen colour pallette!
How about a mermaid design based on this structure?
Let me know if you have any questions and don’t forget to tag me if you join in the fun and try this awesome design! I would love to see your creations.
You can contact me/tag me on Instagram: @radsimona17
Want more quality designs like this one? Get inspired by designs, tutorials, and videos from top face painters from all over the world in our Ultimate Face Painting Ideas Guide!
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