If there’s ever been art to make us love our bodies it’s Sara Shakeel’s collages of stretch marks transformed with glitter. They’ve gone viral with good reason –  they look gorgeous and make us feel liberated too.

Digital artist Sara says the novel idea came about when she  was taking photos of her friend. “She was very embarrassed to show her stretch marks to me, and continuously asked me to Photoshop them.  That made me sad, because I have a lot of them too!”

Sara’s work is characterised by a lot of glitter and crystals, so she decided to bring this magic to stretch marks. “I’ll be honest – even before uploading the pictures I was wondering if anyone would be interested in stretch marks, but little did I know how much the world needed this empowerment. I’m so glad I put it up.”

Now Sara thinks there’s a need to celebrate our unwanted lines. “We all have them in one form or another,” she says.

You might guess a woman creating cutting-edge art like this lives in LA, New York or Paris. But Sara, 28, is actually from Pakistan, and currently lives in Islamabad.

Negative attitudes towards stretch marks on our own bodies have been pretty much universal  – until now. “People from all over the world can relate to it, but not a lot of people here in Pakistan get to talk about it,” she says.

“We are all human and it’s our right to embrace our stretchmarks, cellulite or just plain curves.”

Sara has not always been an artist. She explains: “I was a training to be a dentist but, after failing my last year in dental school, I picked up a stylus and drew collages on my phone – God knows why, as I have zero background in art or digital art.”

Now, she says, her art is all about  spreading “the message of healing”.

It’s something she thinks the world desperately needs. Her work has also touched upon political themes, such as her depiction of Donald Trump with rainbows coming out of his eyes. It made such a mark that it was even shared by pop star Miley Cyrus.

Sara says this image was inspired by Trump’s travel ban on people from Muslim countries. “I am a Muslim and even though my country was not on the hit list, that affected my plans to travel to the US – it scared me,” she says.

Like the glitter stretch mark images, the Trump piece affected people on an emotional level. Some might be surprised that digital art using glitter, crystals and rainbows can have such a deep impact, but that’s exactly what Sara’s doing.