LB 2015 : Beacon of Light

So excited to have finished the first full lesson from Life Book 2015. I needed to warm up a bit before I launched into this and made my Tag from Life Book week 2 first which I shared HERE.
Week 1's main lesson was to create a beautiful whimsy character to be our "Beacon of Light", guiding and supporting me through the year.
I have never drawn a face before, and am just amazed at what I've done here with Tam's absolutely superb video instructions. Here are the progress photos - click on any to see them larger

Tam's figure was done with a yellow/gold monochromatic colour scheme - I shared her sample in my post HERE. Although I want to follow the lessons closely to learn as much as I can, those colours just weren't me, so from this point mine looks quite different from hers. My girl's face is tanned from our lovely NZ summer. I have created a background that references sand and sunshine at the beach, and a bit later I added some additional stamping and embossing with distress powder that adds to the sandy feel

I used metallic paint for her hair, and the rest of her is paua colours. Took these shots in the sunshine so you can see the shimmer

Adding glitter was a fun  step

Butterflies appear regularly in my work. I decorated the dress with a butterfly from a serviette, and I stamped my word on another piece of tissue before gluing that too. The dress has a background of torn sheet music since music is always playing in the background of my life. The little purple heart is a brad.

The character holds symbols that are meaningful to us. Tam's were drawn on. I want to try and include stitch in all my projects this year. I machine stitched down from her hands and left ends of thread to tie some charms on. They are fairly flat so if I want to bind them into a book at the end of the year they are not too dimensional.

The heart symbolises how I always approach my art, and the other charm says stitch. I also machine stitched around the edge when finished...I stitched it unevenly on purpose ;-) 

Love that I've learned so much from following the lesson steps but made my beacon of light my own. I am VERY ready for the next lesson, and she stands on my desk to watch what happens next