Sold an original watercolor, working on my mermaid + summer patio garden pics

So its august, and my birthday is this Sunday! I am turning 23.
and so far... I started off my birth week with some awesome surprises/presents such as:
I sold an original watercolor painting of mine via our etsy shop the other day!
See it here:

---SOLD---
"Bathing in Babylon"
original watercolor painting by Chelsea Rose

....Yes! she has found a good home and is going to New York, in fact.
It is always such an uplifting and exciting thing to sell original work- very inspiring. My heart goes out to those who support the arts!
I was pretty surprised that this watercolor sold in our etsy shop seeing that i tend to do better selling inexpensive prints on etsy and have been reluctant to put much of my original painting work up. However, this proves there are certainly interested art collectors on etsy willing to pay an artist a fair sum for original art. Perhaps i will be putting more of my watercolor and my acrylic paintings on etsy for sale in the near future!
.....seeing that this watercolor has sold also seems to have made me itch to play with watercolor( its been too long!) so i hope i can manage to play with some this weekend even though its supposed to be retardedly hot.

I got another birthday present in the form of a body painting paid commission. A fellow flickr photographer came to me, asking for my body painting services for his planned maternity shoot which he is doing for his portfolio. I happily agreed and i am excited to see how it all comes together since the theme is very "earth mother."

Here are two super quick sketches i made to show him my floral ideas for the body painting( i wanted them to look very different from my current women's study body painting series.) :
front details
back details.
The photographer said he loved these roughed out ideas- which i will be painting with earth tones of green, brown and reds. The shoot has been set for the 17th. It will be exciting to see how the project comes together. and yes of course i will have Danny with me and he will surely take some photos of the body painting process so i can share in an update entry.

In other news I have been doing some more work on my "work in progress" mermaid acrylic painting:

( sorry for the horrible photo- was taken at night in very low and yellow lighting.)
So far i have added a lot more side fins to help fill up space and add more flow and detail. However the painting was striking me as being horribly flat so i started adding bubbles in hopes of concocting some much needed depth. I am still far from finished. I have everything sort of roughed out and now i have to go back in and fine tune. I intend to add more layers of bubble also. And eventually i will have to paint the hands- which i am sure i will avoid till the very end :P

On a personal note i have come to terms with my addiction to hats. And while i am comforted by the truth that there are certainly worse addictions to be had...its still a shame!
My newest addition to my ever growing collection:

I found this one in downtown Portland at the skidmore fountain market which we cruised before heading over to the artful Saturday Market. It is purple and green/my favorite color harmony and It was $15 and is made of hemp. It works as a less dramatic sun barrier then my other sun hat which Danny has likened to a sombrero.

While this summer has been a relatively mild one- the sun has still been out in force and so my patio garden in flourishing:

the wild flowers were the first to come up and thus are most mature. However my morning glory vines have sprouted and quickly matured. They are now happily climbing the lattice and the iron work of the patio. Its a shame i took this photo in the evening because by then the 6 big morning glory trumpet flowers had gone to rest so they are not pictured here. But in this photo you can see some of my chamomile- which i just recently harvested a few flower heads to dry and make tea from.

The basil isn't seen here but its doing well and has gone through its first clippings-Chile sprouts are is still maturing and our fuscia hanging plant is producing all sorts of blooms and attracting hummingbirds to our windows. However my cilantro went to seed before i could even use it for tacos or something!

our little growing space may be small but i am thankful for it! I love hanging out on the patio on these long summer evenings with Danny and sushi cat. Summer is full with life right now. In fact just the other day Danny went outside and came back in with a huge pot full of freshly picked wild black berries from the big bushes around our neighborhood- they are everywhere and laden with fruit. Yum Yum.
As much as i am enjoying summer I am eagerly awaiting fall which i think is my fave season over here in Portland Oregon. The trees turn such psychedelic shades of orange, yellow and pink! And it starts to get a lil chilly so i get to dress in lots of layers, snug beanies and scarfs. yes! I cant wait.

So thats it for now i believe!
I wont be doing anything extra for my birthday this year- just hoping to be able to honor, remember and realize all the love and fine points of this super odd world and existence on it.

Much love to all,
-Chelsea Rose