I'm new to this sort of thing, can anyone give me some constructive criticism please?

Please tell me why you call it desert dancer when you put bubbles..lmao.
PS: I think you should stick to hot colors.. since it would make the model stick out not blend in.

That's just because the stock was called desert dancer ^^

And you're right, next time I need to think about the colours/filters more. I didn't think it was that important because I was mainly testing effects.

Effects were nice, my suggestion is to avoid colours the model is wearing.. so if she has blue go for yellow or pink etc

Oh and you might wanna avoid the sand blowing off the toe.. kinda looks like she is portal-ing from world war and got shot in the foot
*Edit & the arm too-

Haha it's not sand, just smudging, I just thought it helped with that round flow o:

Thanks for the help daaaarlin' <3

D:< LIES..It's sand ;D
& Np I'm opinionated.. so it's what I do.

Eh, not to be the one against things here. The coloring is fine actually. In photo manipulation you want to trick the eyes. Blending is a must. If the FX, and subject of the manipulation are separated then you defeat the purpose. You want to point the eyes to follow it through. Not look at them as two totally different objects. For testing this is pretty good.

Edit: Some of these images show great examples of what I'm getting across.
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/40-examples-of-incredible-photo-manipulation/

Oh, well thank you very much for your words, and that's a really helpful link, lots of inspiration p:

No problem. I'm going into college either this spring, or fall to start my way towards a Bachelors in a GA/GD (Graphic Arts/Graphic Design) major. Know lots of fathers who make a great pay doing this lovely stuff. So the money out of project jobs is a bonus.

I also thought about a graphic design course for quite a few years but I'm shooting for game design now!