Thoughts on Design for Threadless competition?

I do like your idea of a bed bug fighting fairy. But personally the color combinations are a little harsh to the eyes. The colors of the background, bug, dress, skin and wings are all almost too similar which sort of makes it clash. That's just me though. I'd like to see it when the arm and sword are done

I'd second Kristopher on the colors. You've used lots of colors but many of them are not very far apart on the spectrum, and so this creates low contrast. I usually set up a color palette with 3-6 colors, first, and then work from there. This might help if you're not already using one: https://kuler.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/ You can pick from several styles, all of which are very nice. If you need separate shades, you can generate a palette, and then pick a color to generate shades for.

I've never used a color wheel like that before.... I'm not even quite sure what to do with it. I mean I see what you're saying, I'm just having difficulty knowing what to change about it to fix it.

Yeah, I get that. I can try and give a few observations.

The reason it's important to choose just a few colors to start with, is you will end up trying to balance too many colors, and the image will become muddied in some areas and over-bright in others. I use a color wheel to make sure they have a good, balanced separation from each other. Using a color wheel, you can also ease the use of a greater number of colors, because the hue, saturation, and brightness can be algorithmically balanced for you.

There's three kinds of bad contrast going on between the background and the foreground, all caused by bad color balance overall. Firstly, the brightness value is not very different from the character's skin tone. Also, it's not very different in hue from the character's clothing. Ideally, to fix that I would choose a monotone background, maybe a light grey, but going too light brings us to the third issue. The background cannot be matched to the character, and to the bug juice, at the same time. I pulled it into Photoshop and gave it medium grey background, and that fixes a lot of the eye issue I was having. Still though, it leaves a little to be desired in terms of Balance. I also tried straight black which makes the image feel more balanced to me, but also feels sort of plain.

I still haven't told you how to fix it, I guess. I think you should play with the color wheel until you have a good balance of colors to use for the bug's rainbow effect, and the background. Then, work in colors for the main character. You can also try, if you have something like photoshop, adding in some layers above and painting over specific regions, such as the bug juice. Then use that painted layer as an adjustment layer for hue, saturation and light, and just play with things until you get something a little more balanced and easier on the eyes.

So just for shits and giggles I tried a few more background colors, stuck them up. I'm thinking there needs to be more contrast between her and the bug, they are just too close in tone.

OKAY, so I just tried something that's kind of a huge change, let me know if you like it. I know its still not quite what you were thinking but give it a look and tell me what you think.

I think it's a good departure. You can use what you've done there with a few of the backgrounds you tried, as well. I would say lower opacity on that gradient on her, just a bit, and then go over everything with some stronger outlines

I actually used a lighting effects filter... :( I'm really glad I worked on a copy version of her so I can just lower the opacity on this version and lay it over the original.

So the newest one I posted, I completely love. Do you think it still needs the darker/stronger outlines? I feel like now about all it needs is the arm and sword in there. What do you think?

I totally love how it actually looks like night.