One of the nice things about this project is that it rewards hoarders. I kept the little fimo orange slices from a (still unfinished) project I was working on last year.

Every time I make these magnets, I make them in a batch of 28, because that’s how much resin my measuring cups will hold.  It took a lot of sticky trial and error to get that down.

The one with the zipper is everyone’s favorite.  It swings freely.

I used to use scraps from my little books for the background paper in these, but the scrapbook papers commonly available are just as nice. You can’t see them perfectly well anyway.

The one at the top with the orange flowers is one of my favorites.

I experimented with different things to set in the resin, and some were more successful than others.  The gold leaf didn’t have that lovely suspended quality I had hoped for.  The small metal button in the bottom one is nice, though the glare of the light (which was even filtered!) makes it hard to see. I don’t like the clear glass bead as much, but the pearls and filigreed heart are great.

So here’s the cover art I decided on for my novel, SEEING THINGS.  I had thought about using a teacup for a motif anyway, and the idea came to me that it would be cool if the title of the book were written in tea leaves. (A tea leaf reading impacts the plot of the novel.)  So I went to a coffee shop I frequent and asked for “a large black tea, hold the water.” Then I brewed it and drank the tea.  Using a palette knife, I arranged the leaves until they read the title. I did some other shots with my hand, and some with different lighting too. I tried to make a second shot with the leaves forming a shape (a skull is all I could think of) but it didn’t look as cool.

On one hand, this isn’t as good a cover as the one with our model, because urban fantasy novels almost always have a hot chick on the cover. On the other hand, the cover was so cool that I grinned for about two hours solid after I made it.  Two hours of grinning feels right to me.

For those who are now curious about the book, here’s a link to smashwords, where it is currently available. It’s free for a limited time, so if you’re interested in it at all, now is the time to download it. It will be available from at the kindle store on Amazon soon.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/66778

This is the first mockup for the cover of my novel, SEEING THINGS, which will be epublished later this summer.  To start with, I used the painted background which I made using acrylic, stamps, and layers of black gesso.  After photographing it, I scanned it and then played with the color to get a brighter red (since my acrylics are cheap and have more of a red-iron-oxide hue.)

I knew I wanted some textural background, so I wrote out a note from the novel in copperplate script on a piece of parchment with a dip pen. I also drew some images from an old book on witchcraft I have. I combined both of them with the photograph I did of titan buff and gesso on watercolor paper.

I think that if I were to do it again, I’d skip the titan buff colored texture. I wanted to have something close to the model’s skin color to mesh together so that her skin had a texture to it, but the problem is that I had a hard time not making it lighten up the red background I’d spent so long making. Once I’m more proficient in Gimp, I think I’ll be able to figure it out. Somehow I managed to do the cool masking/transparency thing with the text so that where I’d written in black, it showed up clearer and lighter. I’m not sure how I did that, but I’m keeping it.

To get the model’s skin to look like that, I moved the image to Microsoft Photo editor and used their effects tab “watercolor” feature twice.  I think I’d rather just do it once, but microsoft photo editor doesn’t have the same depth of “undo” that gimp has.

What kind of book do you think this cover is for?

These are three paintings/collages I did to use as the background images for my cover art. The red one will be for my first novel, SEEING THINGS, which will be out on Smashwords and Kindle by September 1st of this year.  The green will be its sequel, TREEMAKER and the blue will be for the third in the series, DAYRUNNER.

I started by using texture plates to print with black gesso on the sheet of watercolor. I brushed black gesso around the edges too, so that it would fade into the center.  A crow figures into the plot of the second one (and I like crows) so I painted a crow in gesso.  After it was dry, I painted over with a wash in the dominant color. Using a rag, I rolled some of the paint off. You can especially see this in the blue one. When this dried, I did a third layer of color, thinning it so I had no white spots.  I also used some of the paint to do more textural prints on top of that.

These may not look like much, but they have a very specific function, and I think they turned out exactly as I wanted them to.

One interesting (in an annoying sort of way) is how yellow the cabinet behind the blue painting looks in this image. I think that’s the camera’s auto-correct function.  All of these were done in the same lighting and at the same time.

Here’s the cover for my second pairing of short stories. I made it bigger on this, since it’s my art blog and this site is all about the art.

Finding an interesting photo to work from was the easy part. I do a lot of gardening and have zillions of photos of my plants. This isn’t actually my plant, but one I found on a walk.  I love the textural aspects of agave and century plants.  They are as beautiful and striking as the saguaro, though sadly not as iconic.

For the black bands, I am not really sure what I did, but I managed to do it twice, so I hope when it comes time to make a third cover, I’ll be able to do it again.  I’m still muddling around on Gimp, but I did this cover in 45 minutes instead of two days, so the learning curve wasn’t as hard as I feared.

For the font, I used powerpoint, since the options on Gimp are limited.

I admit the cover doesn’t have very much to do with the stories; I figure for an anthology, all it matters is that it is interesting to look at.

The stories are both literary fantasy. The first is a story about a woman haunted by the voices of the dead.  The second is about an artist living in a tiny cabin in the back country.  They are currently free on Smashwords, but the price will rise to 99 cents when I publish on Kindle, so catch them while you can.

Here’s the link.

I’ve been working on using Gimp to make cover art for a pair of my short stories that I intend to publish soon.  I’ve never used Gimp or Photoshop before, but I had a copy of Gimp that I downloaded when a friend raved about how much she loved it. I found it quite difficult to get used to, frankly.  One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is how to move the piece that you want to move, instead of moving the background.

I started with the photo of the flowers. It doesn’t have much to do with the story, but I own the rights to this photo, and it’s pretty and eye-catching.  I tried to use the gimp word tools to add the words, but they didn’t have enough options, so instead I did it in Powerpoint and copied and pasted it over.  My husband had to give me a tutorial to help me figure out the scaling, but I think I’ve got it now.

The first version of this didn’t have the black, just the white text.  I looked at some other book covers, and thought that having a dark stripe behind the text would bring it to the fore a little better.  Instead of making it solid black, I used the transparency feature at 71%.  In my opinion, the transparency feature is the number one thing that makes Gimp (and other similar programs) worth using.  You just can’t get the same overlapping layered effect using physical media.  Not really.

The short story pair is up on Smashwords right now.  It’s currently 99 cents.  Here’s the link to download it.

“Emily’s Fifth Birthday” & “Alternative Medicine”

And here’s the Kindle Link:

Kindle Version

Here are some more bottlecaps I made for my friend’s birthday.  I think my favorite one is the one with the screws, followed by the one with the plastic ant in it.  It’s interesting that the words from the book become transparent when the resin hits them. Making the background and finding coordinating doohickies to put in there is the easy part.  The hard part is getting the resin to mix properly. Now that I’ve gotten the hang of it, I may start sacrificing more one-of-a-kind objects to suspend within the  resin.

While I was making cards, I decided to make a valentine for Jeremy.  I’d already cut out the Jack of Hearts scans, so I started by glueing on on the scrapbook paper background (the scrapbook paper is to cut the print for the invitation I didn’t use.)

I bought the red handmade paper at a Japanese import store last summer. It was meant to be used as wrapping paper.  I tore a heart out of it, then cut a second heart out of the middle.  Then I painted glossy gel medium in the middle and added the pink glass beads. I liked the tiny heart from the reversed jack, so I wiped that part clear of beads.