Spring, Cats and Covers

Well Spring has sprung here, Down Under. It's amazing how one day everything is dull and lifeless, and the next 'BAM' there are green buds on trees, plants seem to take on a life of their own and the grass gets it's groove on. I must admit it's been nice not having to mow every few days through the Winter months. But, Summer is on it's way and no doubt hubby and I will be sweating our butts off keeping the paddocks and yard under some semblance of control VERY soon :D

Mumma Plover has made a nest in the paddock right near the house yard. Every time we walk out the back door her and hubby start up their squawking. They've got the kids terrified LOL! Actually, it's kinda funny. My son takes great pains to irritate 'Sir Richard' the Rooster by running up and down the fence and getting Richard to chase him. Yet, he's afraid of the Plovers swooping him :D Personally, I'd be leaving the Rooster alone ;)

My lovely old cat, Cooch is getting on now. He's 12 years and has been diagnosed with Diabetes. So I'm needling him twice a day and monitoring his food. He went down hill quite quickly and was in the Vets for 3 days on a drip, due to being dehydrated. He's back with us now but I don't think for long. He's also in the throes of Renal Failure. He's been the best cat. I'm going to miss him when he goes. So in the mean-time he's being pampered and loved while he sends us into bankruptcy. Meanwhile, his brother, Rangi is getting bigger by the day. They've swapped roles as Cooch's nickname was Fatty. Now Rangi (Muffin)'s has earned the new nickname of Tank LOL!

Finally. COVERS!! It's been a stop and start couple of months with covers. I've managed to snag some work with a new publisher, but more on that another time. I feel like I've done a load of covers but with little to show for it. I usually wait for the Publisher to release the cover before I show it here, hence the long periods between posts :D

Anyway, here are the latest for Total-E-Bound ...








and Liquid Silver Books ...



That's it for this post. I'm off to tend my garden and plant my Lavenders :D

Cheers!

Latest Update May 2010

I know I know.. It's been a while :D Been busy working covers, learning how to use my camera, growing some veggies and being Mum.

Here are my latest Coming Soon/Released covers (although by now I'm sure they're mostly released LOL!)



Sinfully Decadent and Reasonable Doubt. Both relatively simple Contemporary covers involving masks, blending and textures.



These two books are for Liquid Silver. It was difficult trying to make Divine Intervention look sexy whilst giving it a Political feel LOL! Love Charlotte's Younger Man. Had a bit of fun with that one, giving the guy a more modern hair-style and playing with the Egyptian textures :D



Thai'ing the Knot is another in a Series by Sedonia Guillone. The cool tattoo was thanks to the very talented Alizel over at DA :D A Subtle Breeze had a paranormal element to it (ghost of dead mother). It kinda worked with her blowing 'magic' dust over her son :D Surprisingly it fitted with the title too.



Forgotten Family is 2nd in a Menage series by Brynn Paulin. I have to admit that I find Menage covers a bit of a chore. Probably because there's so much work involved in them. The theme follows on from book 1 :D

The Perfect Union. I had to create the celtic triad in Photoshop for this one. So I'm rather proud of this cover. There was a lot to fit in but I think it balances out nicely.



Bound by Moonlight is 2nd in teh Exotic Wolves series that I have done, again mostly masks and textures. Mirror Image is another cover for Liquid Silver. I enjoyed the Sci-Fi Theme for this one.



Rescued is pretty straight forward. Masks, blending and textures.
What's your pleasure is 2nd book in the Pleasure series. I really like the simplicity of this cover. And just in case your wondering, that is supposed to be a burn scar on her back. It was an interesting time trying to get something that looked relatively real.



Deadly Obsession and Taking the Chance. Two more contemporaries. Pretty straight forward really.



Healing Hands, probably my favourite cover here. Love the fantasy element to this cover. It all came together quite easily. Ride 'em Again Cowboy is 2nd in the series. I kept the same theme as it was about the same characters.

Just for something different I have created a couple of covers for a few 'Cover Artist' challenges. They are available to purchase should anyone like the look of them. Titles and names, etc can be changed of course :D I'll hopefully be doing more of these in the future, incorporating some different Genres as well.



Contemporary Fiction Thriller/Murder Mystery

Cheers!

Lonely Hearts

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Lonely Hearts by Aurora Rose Lynn.

There were two main requirements for this cover. Firstly the Author didn't want a dark cover and secondly they wanted a snowy road scene.

So the background of the snowy road set the scene for the rest of the cover. I came across a couple that I liked and felt were sexy enough for the book.

I desaturated the image of the couple and played with the contrast/brightness to lighten them up a bit. I also had to brighten the snow scene to blend in with the couple at the top.

I went for a font colour to compliment the rest of the cover and used a lower case to give it a contemporary feel.

All in all I think it came together nicely and does stand out from the other darker covers it is displayed with.

Lust Bites 2009

It's been a while since I've posted anything. There's been something screwy going on with my Firefox application. It won't let me insert images and if I go to IE everything is black and white. God I hate computers! Nothing is simple. There's ALWAYS something going wrong. Anyway, looks like it's all working at the moment, albeit veeeeerrrryyyy sloooooow. So here goes ..

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Lust Bites by Various Authors. As you can see these covers are set up for various authors but all come under the the one Series. We tried for something a little different from last years Lusts Bites covers. Something a bit brighter with a modern edge.

As the series flows into all genre's the covers needed to change to reflect the books contents. So hence the different versions.

The hardest cover would have been the menage cover above. This cover had two stock images - the couple and the extra guy. I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out. I always stress over these meange covers. They take so much time in searching for suitable stock and then putting them together.

It took a little time to find someone that was going to work with this woman. We weren't sure of this guy at first but we came back to him and I think he fits in okay.

And last but not least we have our fellas. I won't bore you with my gripe on the lack of affordable male gay couple stock. So I've had to 'manip' a couple of bods. Again I almost had an aneurism trying to find stock that would work together but in the end I think I managed to pull it off. Thankfully the other cover was a simple single male image, and a very nice one it is if you don't mind me saying.

Live for Today & Danielle and the Wolf

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Live for Today by Carol Lynne is the 12th and final book of the Campus Cravings Series. This book revisits the original two characters from Book 1 - Coach.

The artist request form mentioned a forest cabin and the original two characters. Unfortunately there were limited stock images of the original two characters and they weren't that appealing. So I decided to go with the 'lop their heads off' approach with a couple of brawny and nicely stacked guys.

As for the cabin in the woods. Well it turned out to be a timber Mansion in the woods LOL. Very different from the original image I sent over. Think 1950's hunting shack LOL!

Either way. I'm happy with the result and am kinda sad to see the last of this series.

Thanks for trusting me enough to do all 12 of these covers, Carol!


Danielle and the Wolf by Wendy Stone.

I really enjoyed doing this cover. There's always something 'liberating' about doing a fantasy cover. I guess it's a genre that I am passionate about and where I feel most comfortable using textures.

The castle in the background was the image I wanted to work with as the storyline had a white castle that loomed over the village. There was mention of forests and wolves and of course our ever gorgeous Hero.

The black wolf was easy enough to find. I upped the contrast and lowered the brightness of the image to make him appear darker. I've recently realised that the Brightness/Contrast function is an extremely useful tool. I will find myself using it in almost every cover I do these days.

I played around with a few different Hero's and we finally settled on this one. Then I just had to fit the wolf's head in so that it wasn't obscured by the Title and was able to be seen against the dark background.

I used a stock image of alpine forest tree tops as the texture which I used over the castle image. You can see a hint of them in the dark bottom corner if you look close enough.

Engaging Deception & Passion of Madeline

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Engaging Deception by Summer Jordan is the third book in the Wives-R-Us series.

This cover used three different stock images in this cover.

Firstly I replaced the woman's face. Unfortunately when I cropped the image her nose looked a bit odd. I'm getting quite used to chopping bits and replacing them these days. The hardest part of this is getting the right angles and the right skin tones.

Next I touched up her hair, giving it a reddish tone and added a diamond engagement ring which ties back to the to the story.

The layout is the same as for the previous covers. Although this one is a sexier edge to it.




Passion of Madeline by Robin Gideon.

Gee I played around with a LOT of different stock options for this cover. Historicals are so limiting when it comes to stock. There's not a lot of stock available with models in period dress. Well, not stock that I can afford.

So while this cover looks more Contemporary Western, it is in fact an Historical.

I tried adding sweeping landscapes to the background but it was all starting to get a bit crowded. So we agreed on a plain black background and added some sepia/brown tones to the overall effect.

Phantoms' Pleasure & Halloween Angel

COMING SOON TO TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Halloween Angel by J.P. Bowie is another m/m cover. From memory this had a touch of paranormal, in that one of the characters is a Vampire.

So this cover called for the dark brooding Vampire and the human character dressed in Angel costume.

I remembered having seen sexy guy's in their wings on some stock sites so I did a quick search and found my 'angel'. Of course I had to add new wings as the ones in the image were on upside-down. Of course!

Also the strap round his shoulder was a bit too wide so I narrowed that down a bit. This character also called for a silver loin-cloth. I was able to find a loin-cloth and played around with it until it gave the impression of being silver (hue/contrast/desaturate, etc).

Then I searched around for the dark, handsome & brooding Vamp. I have quite a few Lightboxes that I categorise images into, for example: male_brunette, woman_blonde, male_tattoos .. well, you get the picture.

So I had this guy tucked away for some time. I'd kinda had him pegged as a 'Vampire' type so he fit this cover really well.

So a bit of cutting and pasting and juggling for position and the basic cover was set. The black background was a bit flat so I decided to add an overlay of some black silk sheets although you can't see them very well.

Phantoms' Pleasure by Brynn Paulin.

Argh! The dreaded Menage image LOL! For some reason I can't get my head around these. Maybe because it takes a lot of time to find the stock that's going to work together.

I always tell myself that when I'm not working on any covers I'm going to try to build up a library of manipulated menages LOL! Of course I'm yet to do this.

So. Here we have a pretty steamy menage. The couple certainly looked up for it, so I just had to find a guy to join in. Funnily enough it is the same guy, just from a different image LOL! So in all honesty, once I chose the stock, it all came together very easily.

I matched the skin 'colour' to keep the same tones. I also used some hair brushes so her hair didn't look so 'cut out'. I popped the guy behind her and added some shadowing to his chest, where her hair is meant to be resting. Looking at it now I can see 'issues' with it. But I'm still flying by the seat of my pants in many ways.

Hopefully it will only get easier.

Wanted!! Heart & Soul

AVAILABLE NOW @ TOTAL-E-BOUND!!!

Wanted! by Aurora Rose Lynn is an Historical Western.

In this book the Heroine is the Sheriff and the Hero the Outlaw. Yay for the women's movement! LOL

I do have to admit that I shudder when I see the Historical covers pop up in my inbox. Usually because it means endless hours trawling through the stock sites for any images that I can pass off as 'historical' looking. OR it just means a lot of cutting and pasting - corsets, heads, guns, backgrounds, cowboy hats, crinolins, etc, etc, in an attempt to get the right look.

So that's why I love this cover. It's so simple. The couple are passionate (just pretend her bra is a white camisole - no doubt only hussy's wore black undergarments in those days,LOL!) while the Font, aged paper and Sherrif badge hint towards the Western storyline.

Just some cutting and pasting in this one. I changed the hue of the couple to blend in with the gold tones of the paper/badge.

Sure you'd be hard up working out which one is the sherrif but I guess that's what the book blurb is for.

COMING SOON ... Heart & Soul by Ashley Ladd.

This cover was quite simple. I think this was my one and only attempt at this cover. The only change made was to remove a grungy looking love heart that I'd had behind the text.

So lots of cutting out of 'Characters' in this one. I liked the girl at the bottom. She was a nice change from the norm. I feel a lot of the covers start to look the same after a while. But then that could just be my lack of knowledge to make them more interesting each time. So having her down the bottom filled that urge for a different look.

I matched the font colour to her lips and just added a glow to make it pop out from the background.

Seducing Damian

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

Seducing Damian by Aliyah Burke.

Something a little different with the Egyptian Theme. I used five different pieces of stock in this one cover. Probably cost me more in stock than I get paid to do the cover LOL! But who's complaining. It's something I enjoy doing.

The hardest part of this cover was adding ancient Egyptian style make-up to the woman. Not that you'd really notice it LOL. I also had to darken her skin which was easy enough by using masks and layers. The guy, meh! Easy enough. Just a cut and paste.

The background - hieroglyphics on stone, pyramids and sunset .. all very Egyptian.

It was looking a bit flat and un-interesting so I decided to add a bit of texture by using the Eye. Just gives it another dimention whilst keeping with the paranormal/Egyptian theme.

I must say that I am finding it harder and harder to give a run down on each cover. I feel like I'm repeating myself each time LOL. I hope I'm not boring you all to tears.

Gee it's been hard this month to get my head in the right place to create my covers. I've had quite a few other things going on so my ability to focus has been stretched to the limit LOL! I'm hoping I can get myself out of this rut before I start getting too far behind.

Oh, did I mention that I have started learning Salsa dancing?? hahaha It's really a lot of fun. It's only me doing it, hubby stays at home with the kids. I'm finally starting to get a life outside of the house and kids, which is nice. They've got a few social dances coming up but I don't know if I'll be up for that just yet LOL.

Anyway, that's it from me for the moment. I've had some other covers released and will try to update as soon as I can.