Face Painting for the Fourth
By Hannah Strader
On her desk approximately 12 hours after the sun has set on July 4, MJ Matthews has three contracts for the same holiday a year in advance. For the Overland Park based entertainment company Sister Act Face Painting, the Fourth of July is the busiest day of the year.
“Our day starts very early and we’re finished late,” Matthews said. “We’re painting and entertaining at more than 20 events in the metro area, some with multiple entertainers for hours on end. It’s exhausting.”
Sister Act is connected to more than 100 entertainers, but works with a core group of 20 employees. Matthews not only actively paints faces for her own company, but also arranges the contracts, communicates directly with her staff, runs payroll and promotes the business on social media, all from an office in her home.
“It’s nice to create my own hours, but hard to distance myself from work sometimes. I have to close the door to the office so I don’t walk back in,” Matthews said.
Sister Act Face Painting specializes in elaborate, full-face designs for festivals, picnics, birthdays and other events. In addition, Matthews can arrange for balloon sculptors, caricature artists, henna tattoo specialists, crazy hair services, stilt walkers, clowns and more.
“The most stressful part of the Fourth for me is the moving around,” face painter Danette Rupp said. “I will come to an event and work for two hours, then have to pack up my things, re-load my car, and drive to a different part of the city to repeat the process.”
Another difficult task for the entertainers is gauging when to stop the line in order to have enough time to travel to different event.
“I have never had a line with a wait time shorter than a half hour on the Fourth of July. It’s usually at least an hour, so we have to send someone to number [the kids’] hands and stop when we get to the end,” Matthews said. “There are a lot of crying kids and sometimes the parents get confrontational, too, but the only time our line dies down is when we are leaving.”
It’s a strange business, but a fruitful one.
“What people are asking me to do is a ridiculous concept. I’m putting colors on your kids face and it’s going to wash off in a few hours, but we’re always busy. Every weekend in the summer, we’re booked nearly full,” Matthews said.
If a request hasn’t come through for entertainment on the Fourth of July by January of the same year, chances are that Sister Act will have to turn events away. Rupp, who sometimes helps in the office, appreciates the influx of summer contracts during the slower winter months to stay occupied, but as long as the weather is warm, Rupp and Matthews both will be on site at events and transforming little girls into cheetahs and butterflies.