Face painting is an art that can be undertaken by anyone, amateur or professional. It's a fun way to entertain your children on a boring afternoon. Rain or shine, you can bring smiles and laughter with this simple entertainment.

If you're brave - and you know your kids best - you can even allow them to paint each other! High school teens have enjoyed painting faces for pep rallies for quite some time. They paint their mascot paws, team logos or names, school names and colors on their faces for both fun and fundraising. It's an easy way to earn money for the junior prom, senior class or an upcoming class trip. They set up booths at local arts and crafts shows, midnight madness sales, and during special school functions. Low prices keep the student customers coming back, along with their friends.

Face painting is also used as a way to earn money for special needs, such as a charity event. It can help fund an account for someone hurt in an accident or give financial support to someone who has a chronic illness, such as a heart condition, cancer, or multiple sclerosis. The ideas for kids face painting are limited only to your imagination. When painting faces of young children, you must have patience, allow time for fidgeting, and keep your design simple. It helps perfect your talent to practice the pre-selected designs in advance of an event. Most children are happy to be your guinea pig for your practice sessions.

Ideas for designs come from many places: popular cartoons, movies, coloring books, the animal section in your local library or bookstore, magazines featuring flowers, catalogues, and toy stores. Try asking the neighborhood kids for their ideas. They know what's 'hot' our there on their scene and what they'd be happy having drawn on their own faces.

Kids can be extremely helpful and imaginative. Ask them to show you their favorite characters or to choose pictures from their own book collection. Fingerprints are always fun.

Try painting a fingerprint of a parent on a child's face, using the person's own finger, of course. And in reverse, you could even paint a toe print of a child on a parent's face! Paint the name of a favorite pet on a kid's face. Try dipping a willing pet's paw into the paint and stamping it onto the kid's face. For quick fun, try face painting stamps. Draw a picture of a face onto a large piece of paper and have the child stamp a design on the face.

Regular rubber stamps can be used for this, of course. But for actual human face use, there are special face stamps. Lastly, where should your face painting take place? Try shopping malls, hospitals, birthday parties, charity events, festivals, school events, flea markets, church functions, craft shows, parades, and open house events. Hobby stores may offer classes for kids face painting or might allow you to teach a class yourself.

After all, you'd be appealing to the younger shoppers along with their parents, and that would bring in more business. Face painting is fun and creative. Think about it . you can have a lot of good times with this activity.

Karen Fusco is the co-author of "Busy Moms: The Heart and Soul of a Home", an ebook filled with time-saving and stress-reducing tips and ideas to help build a stronger home, a stronger family and a stronger you. Karen can be reached at karen@busymombook.com.