Day Four - Mobster and McDonald's

I decided that I was going to go to one of my fellow teacher's classes and I had never trained with Svetlana Keller, so I quickly ate breakfast and went to her class. It was very full and I sat toward the back near Tineke Cloet, a Face Paint Forum friend.

Svetlana Keller

I have to describe Svetlana a bit, she is very, VERY pretty and very petite and has this soft Disney Princess voice with a wonderful accent. I just loved listening to her speak...it's like her whole demeanor compels you to want to hug her. But she's not a softy though, she also likes organization and order so her class was given that way, which I actually appreciate. It's one of the things I love about Pashur's classes...we get a lot done because there aren't so many distractions because they both maintain order.

Class Demo

Another thing you should know about her is she is a photographer, a good one. If you look at her gallery on her Kinderschminken website, you'll see her handiwork. Very bright and beautiful pictures. She took a photography course and it shows. Makes me want to take one. But what was cute about that is she knew how to POSE for the camera also. It was darling and we all got a good laugh in class because whenever a cameraman would approach her, she would adopt this serene smiling pose (like the one to the left) that was beautiful and could be in a magazine! I'm sure her "on-the-job" teaching photos are going to be fantastic! The class was good. We learn three designs and I picked up some really good ideas. I loved that she added some texture stenciling to her zombie face. She used crystals on her girl designs that really looked super and I love her use of color.

Innocent Mobster Shonna at lucheon.

After class we instructors went to lunch and there was a beautiful buffet with salmon and curry, which were great together. I sat by Christina and Shonna was across the way. Well, I mentioned that hardly any vendors were taking cards and there were so many paints that I wanted to try. Shonna said she had lots of euros that I could borrow but then she got this really serious face on and said "but if you don't pay me back I'll have to kill you." Well, I started laughing and that just got her going...she was telling me how she was going to chop me up and feed me to the gators where she lived...mobster style. She had all sorts of creative ways of exacting revenge..."No, Denise...I'm not kidding!" LOL! I'm sure the wait staff thought I was crazy! She had me laughing so much I had to put my face up to the ceiling to laugh out loud! Then Christina sweetly offered some euros to me. I know that Christina lives in Amarillo, Texas so I teased her that she would tie me to an anthill and pour honey on me if I didn't pay her back! I was laughing so hard! What fun company I get to keep! Needless to say...I never did borrow any euros!

Arjan the Zombie

My two classes went well. We had a lot of fun breaking up Starblends and repotting them. I had been painted by a student in the first class so I sprayed my face to show that the Starblend sticks even when the paint washes off. Made a mess of my face I'm sure!

I painted piggies and tigers this time on the models instead of traditional boy designs and in the second class, an EFABE helper Arjan had come to class to be a model for one of the students. I grabbed him and turned him into a zombie to show custom Starblend colors (I make Brownple and Ivory so I can do quick zombies.) He heard me bragging on how Starblends holds up to sweating and heat so he told me after class that he was going to put the Starblend to the test and work in the vendor room. I thought that was a great idea. I know they work pretty well because I've worked in the yard in them for a video tutorial I made.

Denise & Nathalie Cloet

Denise & Gonny

I let the students try the Starblends and they did great. I was painted as a Wolf in the first class by the darling Nathalie Cloet. Michelle Triepels-Verkaart did a really cute tiger on me and a nice skull on Gonny Kokee, first time using Starblend and she really seemed to get it and did great blending on the skull.

I hope that everyone in the class learned something about Starblends and tried them. I wanted the students to get a chance to see that you can get good results and even better results for some things than you can with traditional paints.

We took a break to clean up the classrooms and put together a small kit for the last activity of the day. It was actually really fun and turned out better than I thought it would. We were tasked, as instructors, to demo for the students for 15 minutes in teams of two. I was paired with Christina Davison. That was fun for me because I'm a huge fan of her work. We did the traveling instead of the students moving from class to class. I decided to do one-stroke roses like I had at the jam the night before so I used that grey and teal combo that looked so pretty on Elke so I only needed the two one-stroke cakes, white and black and of course...BLING! Christina did a cute heart tiger the first class and then her signature horsey design in the other classes. We were a little behind on the first class, figuring out our groove, but then in the following classes we got too fast and had to fill in the time a bit! It was fun to paint full speed and not do much talking...more like a gig and the students would clap at the end...much better than a gig!

Shonna and Mark crackin' up!

It was funny because the courtyard doors behind us were opened and we kept hearing this uproar at the beginning of each class and laughter coming from another classroom. We were pretty sure it was Mark but we weren't sure what he was up to. Turns out that he and Shonna were just having a blast being silly with the students. I guess at some point Shonna was making sexy balloons??? Is this true? LOL! Lucky students! I would have loved to have watched that!

After class everyone changed and we were going to meet and go somewhere for dinner. I met Pashur and Sean waiting downstairs. I still had drink tokens left because I hadn't had any adult beverages all week so I thought I would try something. I pled with Pashur to help me because I didn't know "how to" drink. I've had a few drinks of wine at a friends, a plum Saki with my sushi at Red Rock and one super strong martini that I couldn't even finish but I had never ordered something from a bar. So he recommended a cider called Strongbow. It was actually good. It reminded me of Martinelli's that is a Cold family tradition at New Years but just a hard cider version. It was so nice to sit with those two wonderful guys and enjoy the last of the golden sun of the day.

Stopping at the beautiful Hyacinth fields

We didn't officially plan on dinner as a group because the conference was technically over but the EFABE team was nice enough to take us to McDonalds near the hotel. I know it doesn't sound like much but it was one of my most memorable meals of my life. We piled in a car and I had Mark, Sean, Pashur & Christina in there and me. I guess we were quite the sight when we saw a hyacinth field and pulled over to the shoulder and piled out clown-car style, like the tourists we are, and took photos of the beautiful field of flowers. Brenda Rosendahl caught this photo of us...I think there is even a video floating around somewhere of the spectacle!

 When we first got there at McDonald's we weren't sure what to do so Pashur told me I could go first so I started ordering and was right in the process of paying and Saskia de Graff dove after me and stopped me. The reason we were waiting was to gather everyone together before we ordered. I teased Pashur that he was punking the newbie and he swears he wasn't! I think many of us got the "traditional" Big Mac and fries and because they were busy the fries were nice and hot. My zombie, Arjan, showed up and looked as gruesome as ever! The paint ran a little but the Starblends tolerated the heat and worked well. He tried to get the McDonald's clerk to react by ordering BRAINS...but I guess she was too professional.

Sean Avram captured one of my best meals ever!

I can't tell you how happy this evening made me. I got to sit at the table with all of these great painters and instructors. Even the silver haired man across from me is Ferry Zeeman, a body painting pioneer in the the Netherlands. We were talking about Ferry's beautiful landscaping, Sean's funny kids, crazy stories from the trenches of face and body painting and one particular crazy story about Wiser's narrow escape from a dark "snake" infested bar in Key West! They weren't really snakes... but he'd have to tell you that story himself! I love that everyone loves to laugh as much as I do. It was also a little sentimental because the conference was over and I didn't want the fun to end. Little did I know that the next three days would be just as fabulous.