Painting a picture of pregnancy

A heavily pregnant Mariah Carey painted her baby bump with a picture of a butterfly last year.

And now a growing number of women are choosing to celebrate pregnancy in a similar way.

From a life-like depiction of an unborn baby to a map of the world, these incredible photographs show how the spherical shape of an expectant mother's stomach forms a perfect round canvas.

Vonetta Berry, a body painter based in Houston said that she finds a pregnant stomach the ideal surface for painting on.

She told the Huffington Post: 'The first belly I painted was my own.

'My first instinct is that, since it's round, I should do something round. But I wanted to play with shades and make a flat surface design look by using shades.'

Each work of art takes between three to five hours to create, depending on how elaborate the design is, and she gets paid as much as $700.

While flowers is a popular pick, Ms Berry describes that her favourite request was from a women who wanted an oven painting on her stomach with a bun inside.

Many women also use face paints to decorate their own baby bump.

Manufactured to be gentle on the skin, face paints shouldn't stain, although it's advisable to first test any paint on a hidden section of your body to make sure it can be removed easily.