167 girls to paint!

[tigi]

HELP HELP HELP ME!!!!

I have been asked to offer nail art at the local school for a charity day . No problem I said, happy to help I said. they will get all their nails painted and nailart on both thumbnails.

Today the school rang 85 excited little girls are awaiting me on tuesday !

Ok, I have everything i think but the nail enamel. I do have china glaze and creative that i use on clients BUT I need to get more and to be honest as I am not being paid for this (but i am able to give each child my business card etc and also have a free ad in their monthly magazine.) I need to use something less expensive and most of the colours I have are quite grown up.

SO

1. what do you think would be a suitable over the counter polish i can buy. Rimmel? Is it ok to use on kids?

2. would you suggest i bin the base coat, top coat and enamel after doing the kids?

I am bringing sanitiser and the girls will all be washing their hands beforehand.

There are two us doing it. one painting the nails and one doing the nail art.

ANy other advise you may have will be most welcome.

tigi

 

[louiser]

If you have time could you order some of United Beautys Attitude polish? Sometimes you can get it as cheap as £1-2 per bottle, some of the colours only really need one coat as well, this would probably be even cheaper than anything you could get over the counter. They dont seem to go gloopy either which would be good if the lid might be off for a while xx

 

[Katelisa]

only skip the base if your using a light colour, you dont want loads of little girls running round with stained fingers!!

why dont you just offer a couple of colours, a light pink / peach / lilac as a base, which they can probably leave on for school afterwards. because i can tell you from experience, give them too much choice and they will be there all day!

 

[pure]

I have just come home from doing an afternoon of children's nail art at my daughters school Xmas fair. I offered hand painted or nail stickers on thumbs and then offered a clear glitter on the rest of the nails.

I used some cheap Sally's polish and to be honest I wish I had taken my good stuff because I ended up with gloopy colours!!

 

[HeLLoKittY!]

I did a school fair last thurs, on my own & I only managed to do 18 sets in 2 hours, nail art on every finger which was a big NO-NO!

I wont go into all the ins and outs of what I did cause I went totally OTT and i didn't need to, so my advice to you is:

Sanitise hands even if the little ones have washed their hands cause there are lots of nasties going round school! (you could get the kids to sanitise their hands while they are waiting).

I wiped each childs nails over with nail polish remover before i started.

I took all my attitude polishes and two-way nail art pens.

I didn't use base coat but did use top coat.

Only have a very limited amount of nail art designs to choose from and make sure they are easy-peesy because when you've been doing loads you get tired and it's hard work to get the kids to stay still.

The girls love the silver glitter polish I had & all seemed to want it!

Take loads of buisness cards and leaflets, it's amazing how much interest you generate from these fairs, even if it's just from school staff!

Hth's

It's really hard work but it raises cash and the kids think it's wonderfull, Best of luck!

andrea x

 

[ADiva1]

You'll be surprised about how fast you will work. Remember the nails are only tiny!

DO not take your black or dark red polish, as they WILL want those!

Goodluck, have fun.x

 

[Katelisa]

but DO take a pale blue as there will probably be a couple of little lads wanting a go aswell!!

 

[~Emmsybabes~]

I haven't done this personally,
But I attended and sat with my daughter to supervise while she and a friend did "nail painting" at the school fayre a few months ago...

after observating all the kids at our school, I would say,
Don't take too many colours... I would only have maybe 5 choices.... the more they have they will NEVER make up their minds...
Silver and a hot pink from orly were the most popular ones...
Only then for some reason, they all decided it would be cool to have alternate colours on their nails :irked: lol

I think CND enamels are reasonably priced though, and you will know for a fact they won't go gloopy on you...
The hot pop collection and a nice silver and a pale pink would be cool !!!

And for the nail art Maybe just some simple 5 petal flowers with a dotting tool, a few glitter polish flicks with a striper pen,
And maybe a lady bird to choose from...
again not too much choice...

My kids used nail art stickers I gave them, it was pointless as the little girls were walking away from the table, the stickers were coming off..
(I think they are little pickers)

Hope it all go's well for you xxx

 

[tigi]

thank you ladies for all your help and advice, loads of great info for me. i shall go and choose five colours gold red blue pink and silver and then offer the following designs

1. snow flakes on thumbs and snow balls on the other fingers

2. snowman face on thumbs and snowballs on the other fingers

3. father christmas on thumbs and glitter nail varnish on other fingers.


what do you think? I am very excited and it comes at a positive time for me too, hubbie came home tonight with a redundancy letter...............

thanks again everyone

tigi

 

[Annebet]

Hi I would only offer nail art on one nail as even something simple takes times with small children as their fingers are so tiny, I wouldn't do gems I did and they where back every five mins needing gems lol I agree about the Polish I took loads and they where stuck for choice they mainly chose pink luckily I had a good few different shades of pink , I took stickers and the girls loved them, most of them picked the stickers so I painted with base coat ,then pink, then stickers, then top coat and then quick dry spray. Have Fun LOL

 

[loubylou]

As well as giving out your business cards i would give out a voucher or a special offer to entice the mums to the salon,
and take a couple of paracetamol half an hour before you start because they get so loud its unbelievable,
and most of all have fun

 

[sarahcarrick]

Agree with the pinks! We did a school fayre last weekend and most of the kids chose pink. We just did polish and simple nail art...we did do rhinestones, but only on one nail on each hand. I went to a wee shop we have in our town and bought a job lot of Rimmel colours for a pound each..I think they are maybe last season's colours. These were fine ...we also put all the colours on a sample thingy that was great ...it was passed round in the queue so most girks knew what colour they wanted by the time it was their turn. Only one boy was brave enough...he hd black and red stripes...Man Utd colours apparently...LOL!

 

[c-b0t]

There is this polish brand called Jordana. It's like $1.49 for each bottle, and they have a lot of fun colours to choose from. The quality wasn't too bad for such cheap polish either!

 

[mdskora]

Good luck...

I agree with what has been said up top..

Also I am doing the same thing at my daughters Fete for st patricks day..
I will just have 5 0r 6 polishes to choose from and prob some sample art nails already done so they can choose what they want before i start.. charge them $2 ( money to the school) and give them each a printed gift voucher for their mummys. 20% off nails and waxing for April/May/June ..etc... still working on it but so far that is what i have come up with

Hope some of that helps
Mel

 

[Katelisa]

i would be tempted o use your ususal polish range. because after a week and the polish is still on the moms will think "that was good" and might be more likely to book with you due to the qualiy of work!

Also, are you going to have record cards for each child? you might have to for a parent signature. also means you will have all their details for future promo's.

 

[tigi]

the school has asked the parents to sign the letter they had sent out to them and they will keep it on their records.

I have had a few phonecalls already from mums asking me more about the event, and the letter that was sent out explained i couldnt paint any injured fingers, excema etc.
great idea re the vouchers!

I shall take photos and hopefully it will be a lot of fun.

have a lovely weekend everyone!

tigi

 

[Mouffloncake]

only skip the base if your using a light colour, you dont want loads of little girls running round with stained fingers!!

why dont you just offer a couple of colours, a light pink / peach / lilac as a base, which they can probably leave on for school afterwards. because i can tell you from experience, give them too much choice and they will be there all day!

And want each nail painted in a diff colour lol

x

 

[femmefan]

I've done four of these events over the last couple of weeks and have gained 12 new clients for my nail-biter program in January plus lots of extra seasonal bookings and a couple of pamper parties so it's well worth the effort.

I manage to do the smaller kids in about 6 minutes including nailart on every finger! This is because I use the Konad nail stamping kit. I have a chart with 6 colours to choose from and 6 stamping designs so it's very quick for them to choose. I only use a base coat if they choose the red or black colour (these are still popular regardless of having to take them off for school) and a glitter top coat is chosen by about 90%.

I would use your normal professional polishes as the mums will notice this and be impressed.

Also, if you offer childrens pamper parties do a few flyers and give one to each child to give to their mum as it's a great way to generate bookings.

Cheers and good luck,
Hazel

 

[elegancenails]

fantastic idea!

im contacting my local schools soon! ill take pinks, blue, lilac,glitter and an orange (as theres always one)
nail art stickers
buisness card stapled to flyers for childrens parties, saving voucher for 10% and my price list,to hand out to parents
also a donation box so they have the choice and itll cover some costs too, i doubt the school would mind this if i give them a cut

good luck with it - have a drink im the evening! :lol:

 

[jes]

I always seem to be the voice of doom and gloom, but are you insured to do this? There's potentially a lot of things that could go wrong here. All the companies I've been with require client record cards and I'd imagine they'd want parental consent or something? I think you should definitely give your insurance company a ring and see what they say

As regards to nail polish on little fingers, I'd check the MSDS first and make sure there's no nasty stuff like formaldehyde or toluene in there.

Jes