Design a Book Cover
I am participating in a fun cover designing contest at A Writer’s Journey Go on over and take a look at all the fun covers and vote starting August 31st and ending September 7th.
Back in the old days I had ClarisWorks on my Mac computer and I would spend hours manipulating clip art pictures, painstakingly cutting and moving and creating.  As I’ve become more and more fixated on writing, I’ve been forgetting how much fun working with images can be.  Recently I downloaded Gimp and I’ve been teaching myself how to use it.  I’m learning to use stock images and manipulating things on Picnic through Flickr.  I’ve also been learning to make videos.  So much fun!  I love using various media to put out a message of some kind.
This is a simple cover for a short story that I’ll be putting out in conjunction with the sequel to my first novel. Â I used a photo from istockphoto.com and I didn’t do too much to change it, just cropped and added the words. Â I played with the balance of the image some. Â I like this font a lot, I think it works well for the story. Â Just looking at this cover inspires me to get working on the story itself!
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Progress Trackers
At proofreaders; available for pre-order
What Is Meant To Be
Second draft
Homework & Homicide (working title)
Second Draft
Book Montage
RFW winner October 7, 2011
It’s important to work with an image that inspires you. I like that the picture tells me what to expect in the story.
I looked through about twenty pages of images before I found this one! I fell in love with it. Definitely had everything I was looking for.
The cover leaves me with wanting to know more. Great job! I’m a fellow contestant stopping by to take a look.
Thanks!
Hi,
The cover says it all! Well done. 😉
best
F
Thanks! Now I’m curious what people might assume the story is about based on the cover… I hope it will live up to expectations
I love it! It’s original, and I agree; it tells a lot about the story. Thanks for participating in my contest!
Thank you for the opportunity! This is really fun. Hard to choose only three to vote for, though!
Good job Ruth. I see a story about surmounting challenges.
That seems like a fair assessment!
If only I had Photoshop! Arg! You did a great job. 🙂
♥.•*¨Elizabeth¨*•.♥
Can Alex save Winter from the darkness that hunts her?
YA Paranormal Romance, Darkspell coming fall of 2011!
Download Gimp! It’s totally free and, from what I understand, really similar to Photoshop. I’ve never used Photoshop. Gimp has taken some work to learn, I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube instruction videos.
Your cover is definitely very evocative. I like it. :O)
Thanks! 🙂
You’ve chosen a good story-telling image. I think your name and title are fighting each other. Maybe just bump the font size of your name down a notch.
That is an excellent idea. Thank you.
There is an entire story just in this cover–which is what makes it so intriguing! Love it!
Yay! And that’s a great way of putting it.
I’m anaother fellow contestant – great cover, very unusual.
Thanks for the tip about Grimp. I’ll certainly try it out. I’ve always envied people who could afford Photoshop, and am curretnly using a very old. very limited but very userfriendly progrmme called ‘Photosuite’. I remember using Claris too, gosh, that was an awfully long time ago!
Gimp has taken some getting used to. It isn’t exactly user friendly and some of it is really counter-intuitive. But I’ve heard Photoshop is the same way.
Lol, ‘Gimp’ even! (Did I really say ‘Grimp’!
I find it hilarious when I use a program called gimp to make images of people with mobility disabilities…ironic? I wonder why they named the program that!
Wow!!! This is a pretty impressive cover; I think the font you use is pretty interesting–kinda reminds me of a woodsy setting, perhaps somewhere in the country? Also the image on the book cover says it all. Definitely looks like a story I’ll want to read soon. 🙂
Also, just want you to know that I absolutely love the layout of your website! It is absolutely beautiful, and the tabs, the text boxes, and everything else make the whole website look like a book itself. This is probably one of the neatest websites I have ever seen. Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much! A friend set me up with this website (his is the PoolFence website on the blog roll) and he taught me how to add widgets and such. I’m having so much fun learning how to add things to the site. But the basic layout and look of the site was all him!