About me
Hi, I'm Ashlea Henson, a professional Face Painter and educator with a lifelong passion for turning faces into art.
My journey began at just 5 years old, when my mum Sherrill launched one of the UK's very first Face Painting companies - Mimicks, back in 1990.
By the age of 11, I was already painting faces at events and working with real customers.
I wasn't big enough to reach the children if they sat on our tall chairs so my customers had to sit on a little step ladder while I painted them. Very often I was smaller than they were!
I spent my teen years and early twenties travelling the length & breadth of the UK with my family. We lived in our camper van all summer, moving from show-ground to show-ground.
Mimicks fast became one of the countries biggest Face Painting businesses with a fleet of over 20+ artists.
Our busiest year ever was 2003 when we painted at 89 corporate events, 51 shows and 44 parties between April to September.
Over the 3 decades Mimicks was in business, we painted over 185,000 faces!
In 2009 I started my first Youtube channel! Over the years I've become widely known for my easy to follow face painting tutorials, where my channel has reached almost 10 million views and has over 70,000 subscribers.
I've been fortunate enough to work with well-known brands including Disney, FabaTV, Snazaroo & Party Delights, creating face painting tutorial content and helping inspire painters of all levels around the world.
Alongside my online work, I've also taught face painting training courses across the UK and abroad.
Instructing both aspiring and professional artists on how to improve their skills, grow their confidence and build successful face painting businesses was a huge passion of mine and something I would like to do again in the future.
More recently, I've discovered a love for digital art! I've used this to create my own custom range of Face Painting menu cards here at The Printy Pop Shop, combining my design skills with decades of face painting experience. I hope these new products enable painters to easily build the set-up of their dreams!