Happy New Year!!

A belated Merry Christmas and New Year to you all. Can't believe another year is upon us.

I've had lots happening this last month or so, not only with covers but with life in general. We've finally moved house and are now settled (kinda) on our 5 acres. I'm slowly but surely getting my veggie patches up and running, and planted some beans and lettuces the other day. I'm planning on getting a good range of fruit and veg from the land here. A lot of work ahead of me but I think it will be very rewarding. Can't wait to get some chickens and the kids want some ducks LOL! I'm sure we'll have a menagerie of critters before we know it.

The kids will be starting a new school in a few weeks so that will be a bit trying, although they say they are looking forward to it. I must admit that I'll be looking forward to the peace and quiet LOL! Just can't concentrate on my covers when the kids are trying to kill each other ;)

Anyway, I'll finish up with most of my remaining covers from 2010.





Lyrical Press

Single White Knight

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!!!

Single White Knight is an erotic Time Travel written by the talented Brynn Paulin.

This cover was challenging in the fact that I needed to bring together a medieval knight and a modern day guy.

Originally to keep a sense of history I had a castle in the background but we felt we needed a more modern background.

There were two versions of this knight that I was playing around with, the front view that I ended up using and a side view. There was some juggling involved because the front guy was difficult to work around, with his arm up like that. But I think I've managed to get it all in without it looking too cluttered. The original knight images were actually black and white so I had to change it to look like it was colour.

A simple mask and hue change were all I needed there. Luckily there were not too many colours involved. Just the armor and the skin. The guy in the front was a simple cut and paste although his 'angles' were awkward to work around.

I made the font follow the line of the guy's body. Whether that is graphically correct, I don't know, but it seemed to look better to me LOL!

You may notice some textures hidden in there somewhere. I found a nice sketched medieval battle scene and thought that would add some interest to it. It's hard to see on the cover but on the cover flat which incorporates the back it looks quite good.

I've been playing around, creating my own textures lately. I take my own photos and then just play around in Photoshop with them. Adding textures can really make an image 'pop' and it's fun seeing what you can do with them.

I've also been invited to write a monthly blog over at TEB's Hot Spot! This month's post is a breakdown on the Men of Tokyo: Sudden Surrender.

Send Me An Angel!!

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!!

Send Me An Angel by Alysha Ellis.

Yum-o! LOL!

A nice straight forward cover with minimal stock. It's quite striking but that could just be the blue/white theme. Oh and the God-like model on the front! Ha ha ..

Anyway, it was pretty simple, despite being the second version. Just for something a little different I'll attach a copy of my initial idea. As you can see the theme is quite similar

So only three pieces of stock in this cover. Background, man and wings.

The wings were just a cut and past with a bit of softening and 'Fluffing' around the edges with the smudge tool.

The original model had a necklace on which I had to paint out. I'm not 100% happy with it, because I can still see where I painted. Of course others possibly wouldn't notice .. but now that I've brought your attention to it .... LOL!

Oh and Alysha I hope that drool didn't effect your keyboard! LOL! I'm glad you liked it though :D

Sorry things have been a bit slow on here lately. I've been a bit distracted by real-life LOL. There are a couple of covers in the pipeline and my next batch will hopefully be sent through to me any day now. So more covers to come soon. Thanks for being patient with me :D

Heatwave

Oooh lookey, Heatwave's been released. Coming soon to TEB!

I was beginning to think that this cover had been swept under the rug. It's been a while since I did this one.

TEB made a light change and moved the Author's name down to just above the Title. Makes sense as in my version it's covering part of the woman's face.

So. It was a pretty straight forward cover. Changed the couples colouring (hue) to match that of the sunset a bit more. Then just blended the two images together using a layer mask.

The font was one I downloaded and from memory I just added a glow to the text.

I like how this came together. Let's hope it works for the Authors.

Not much else been happening. Been finishing up some more covers.

Don't you just hate it when you do something that you kinda know you shouldn't be doing but you do it anyway? It was suggested that I contact one of my authors to discuss a cover I was doing. The first version was vetoed and I needed to get more of a feel for what she was after. So I'd mocked up another cover and sent it to her for approval. I also sent that version to the publisher. Fine. Dandy. Not a problem. However, I stupidly created a 'option' version and for some reason sent that along as well. The publisher came back preferring the first version and of course the Author came back preferring the 'option'. Argh!

Stupid. I felt so bad. So there was a bit of bending over backwards to make up for my mistake. Claire was SO understanding. God she's awesome! Anyway, it all sorted itself out in the end. Mind you I ended up with THREE covers for them to choose from because I felt so awful LOL! I guess that's why contact with authors should be left to the publisher. Suits me to a tee. Too many cooks ... yeah, you get the idea :D

Oh. Did I mention my husbands van was written off the other night? A young fellow on his P's and driving dad's car hit it head on. He said a dog ran across the road in front of him and he swerved to miss it. I appreciate that he didn't hit the thing but I always remember being told not to swerve to miss an animal. Aaanyway, no biggie. The insurance will cover the cars and no-one was hurt, except maybe his pride. His young girlfriend was in the car at the time LOL! Oh well. We live and learn.

Edited to add: Hubby wasn't in the car. It was parked out the front of the house! LOL Thought I'd better add that so I didn't sound more worried about the animal than my husband. As tempting as it can be sometimes :D

Miranda & the Prince

Coming soon to Total-E-Bound: Miranda and the Prince by Wendy Stone.

Isn't she pretty *sigh*. Something a little bit different this time. I must say, it was a nice sidestep away from the man-titties and perky breasts LOL! I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen standing in the check-out line at Big W with this one, is all I'm saying ;)

Okay. So where do I start. The girl was pretty straight forward except for her shawl. It had little silver spangles on it which didn't suit the theme of the 'Pauper' girl so I overlayed it with a tartan texture which gave it a more earthy, hand woven feel. The background is the beautiful Lake Bled in Slovenia. My husband's best mate married a Slovenian girl and he had the pleasure of going over there to the wedding to be best man. I stayed at home and looked after our baby daughter. He owes me big time.

But I digress. The ring was possibly the most fiddly part of the cover. The original ring was a yellow topaz so I tracked down a nice image of amber and cut out a chunk and stuck it over the top. A bit of blending and touching up and I think it came out pretty well ;)

All together there were four stock images used in this cover. There was a bit of trial and error with the font and font colours but other than that this was a relatively easy cover to do. There was talk about having the prince in the background but I'm glad we went with this one.

The plans are coming along for our Melbourne trip. Oh, and my camera died yesterday. Damn! Now I'll need to get myself another one to take down to Melbourne with me. I'm not going to miss that photo opportunity LOL! I had wanted to save up for a really good camera but I may just have to go for another 'aim and shoot' for the time being.

Um. I burned the back of my finger the other day. Got a lovely two inch blister running down the back of it. Funny the stupid things you do, isn't it? Who in their right mind would test a pot on the stove with the back of their finger? I do it all the time though. I flick the back of the steamer pot with my finger to see if it's on (only because I can't see the contents). Usually it just feels hot and I know things have started. But this time my damn finger stuck to the pot! Eeeeouuuch! Turns out that I'd had a blond moment and forgotten to put water in the pot so I burned myself with steel that was on the verge of meltdown.

Anyway, I think I've learned my lesson ;) The blister finally popped yesterday. Ick! I'm not quite sure what to do with it now. I'm just keeping it covered so I don't have to think about it LOL.

I'm so hard on my hands. I stubbed my middle finger on my right hand the week before so now it swollen and I can't bend it very well. Add that to the 2 inch burn AND the nice scar from the Vanity incident and there goes any visions of being a hand model *snort*.

Conjuring Cal

Conjuring Cal by Buffi BeCraft-Woodall is coming soon to Total-E-Bound.

I love this cover. It's definitely up there as one of my fav's. I've been dying to do something like this for a while and I will admit that it was heavily inspired by Denise Rossetti's - Gift of the Goddess cover by the incredible Syneca. I added a few brushes to give it that magical feel. I mucked around a bit with the dragon, all the while berating myself for not having done some more drawing/painting lessons. I ended up resorting to some dragon stock available at DA and in the vain attempt to not take credit for someone else's work, I maniped it to add another head. As required by the story.

I added his hair, again with brushes and was surprised that it was allowed through. I didn't think it looked quite real enough - but hey! I'm not complaining LOL.

Oh, I so need to practice my hair and painting skills. I also really need to start making some of my own brushes. DA has been a fantastic resource, but I'm hesitant in mentioning it because I don't want just anyone going along and thinking they can take things for themselves. There are rules set up by the owners of the stock there. Some allow commercial use, others not.

I guess now that I have Illustrator and CS3 I have less reason to say I can't. Now it all really just comes back to time. Time to focus. Time to experiment. It's frustrating to turn around 3-4 hours later and have nothing to show for it. Anyway, this wasn't meant to be a winge post. So Hurrah! Conjuring Cal has been released :D

Ooh .. quick update on the So You Think You Can Dance AUSTRALIA. It's down to the final 4 and Rhys is one of them. Yay! for Rhys LOL. Love him to death even if he does bat for the other team. He danced with Jack on Sunday night. Jack is the fav to win the comp. He's good. Damn good, but I still gravitate to Rhys. Anyway, here they are (Rhys is the one on the right of the screen, slightly to the front):



Phhwwaaaarrr .. is all I can say.

The Set Up

Now released over at Total-E-Bound
























The Set Up by J. P. Bowie. A relatively easy cover to do. The only time-consuming part of this was finding the 'right' character to portray the Native American Indian movie extra. I chose a different image of this guy but apparently it had been used quite a bit so I had to find someone else. Turns out this image is the same guy LOL! Just a different photoshoot. Unfortunately he had some quite ridiculous glasses on his face so I had to chop off his head. I must say that the did give him that air of 'budding LA Moviestar', but, the glasses had to go. Oh, and I also had to add the long hair.

The other fellow was pretty straight forward. I touched up his eyes to make them a darker blue. I tried something a little different with the font this time. A dark colour got lost and a light colour seemed to be too much. So I added a 'style' which is available in CS2. I'm pretty happy with it.

Aaah .. it's been quiet around the blogs with a lot of the Authors that I frequent heading off to the RT convention. I'd love to go to one of these conventions one day and meet all these wonderful people. I doubt that I'd be heading off to the US or UK though, it would have to be a home grown Romance Writers of Australia get together LOL! Maybe when one comes to Sydney or Brisbane I could escape for the weekend. Gee, I wonder if Total-E-Bound needs an Australian liaison officer LOL. Probably the ONLY way I'd make it to one of these shin-digs.

Got the kids home on school holidays. YAY! (not). We're off to the Dentist today. All three of us. YAY (not). Then we'll hit the shops to buy some much needed shoes for the kiddies. So all in all it's going to be an expensive and very frustrating day.

Wish me luck!

Cover Backlog

Here are a few more of my covers. Perhaps another post will bring me up to date on artworks that have been given the go-ahead and then we'll be living in the moment ;) LOL.