We Are All Divine

Many religious and spirituals traditions teach that we are all connected to the divine, to God, to the supreme being. Yet we treat ourselves sometimes worse than we would treat another human. We doubt ourselves, we have an inner critic who tells us we are no good, that we can't do what we dream of, that we are not worthy of success and happiness. Unearthing our own inner beauty was on my mind as I worked on this portrait.

The words "we are all divine, find your inner goddess" came to me about halfway through the piece, so I wrote them around the shoulders and neck of the figure with a fine sharpie.

I started with a StencilGirl® face design by Karen Johnson called The One. I chose the stencil because I wanted to create a universal, multi-cultural/multi-ethnic image.

I was excited try try my new Boho Blends embossing powder, developed by Gwen Lafleur for Emerald Creek. I applied sticky VersaMark ink through several stencils, sprinkled embossing powder, shook off the excess and blasted it with a heat gun. I also used quite a few of Gwen's stencil designs.

I knew she needed a halo, and I tried several different methods of creating it.  After some trial and error, I combined one of Gwen's stencils with a circular design by Nathalie Kalbach, and added some gorgeous blue Boho Bits for texture.

I made a short video that shows all the steps.

You can also check out some of the steps in the photos below.

 I decided the face and the background needed some color, so I used Derwent watercolor pencils to liven up the page. I also added the words "we are all divine, find your inner goddess" to the page.

 The pink and lavender accents looked pretty, but the halo was getting washed out, so I re-did the halo.

 The halo needed more depth, so I added Nat Kalbach's Grove Street stencil with the Lapis Lazuli Boho Blend.

 I wanted some interest on the right side of the page, so using black archival ink, I added a triangular border stencil from Pilgrimage to India by Laurie Milka.

 Last but surely not least, I used heavy gel medium and carefully applied the Boho Bits around the inner edge of the halo. I dabbed coordinating dots of Nuvo Drops on the outer halo and edge of the hairline.

With the addition of a little extra color on the hair, cheeks and lips, my divine goddess was almost finished. She needed wings. I had tried several wing ideas, and finally settled on a Baby Angel Wing by Kristie Taylor. Done in fine white embossing powder, it was the final accent that the page needed.

This artwork reminds me to embrace my own spirituality, that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, and helps me remember to treat myself and others with kindness.