Beauty - Mixed Media

Hello, Hello!  I hope you all are having a fabulous week!  So far mine is going great, we've been enjoying Spring Break with family but I did manage to fit in a little studio time.  I've also been adding items to my Etsy store daily and connecting with my local artist community (which is very exciting for me).  This week I was also featured on Dawn Herring's JournalChat over on Twitter, so that was extremely cool.  I feel like it's definitely been a great week so far and I have so much to be grateful for!!

Okay so onto to some art!  

I just finished up this 12x12 canvas and have been itching to share it with you:

I started working on this one about a week ago but really hadn't had the time to sit down and finish until last night.

If you follow me on FB, then you've seen this one coming along.  I started out by adding the swirls with crackle paste and a stencil, then transferring the image with gel medium.

Because there was already a lot of texture on the canvas from the stencil, the eyes and hair didn't transfer well.  So I decided to give her a beautiful butterfly mask and long dark brown hair.

From there she sprang to life and her message fell into place: 

Dare to Dream,

 Beloved All Natural Beauty, 

Forever Believe

I'm very happy with the way she turned out and I think I'm going to make artist prints of this one.  I've been researching how to make prints and I think this would be a perfect canvas to try it on.  Either way, this "Beauty" will be available on Etsy starting tomorrow.

I've got some other exciting news to share soon, so keep an eye & ear out!  I really want to THANK all of you for all of your kind and encouraging words.  They really mean the world to me and I am so grateful to have this forum to share my love of art with you.  Have a wonderful day & from the bottom of my heart THANK YOU!!!