Blog Header Design – The Lord’s Lady

by Roseanna White | Aug 20, 2014 | Uncategorized

Not exactly a book cover design, but the same general idea. 😉 I had the pleasure a week or so ago of designing a header for a new blog by the awesome Sandi Rog, and I thought it would be fun to break it down for you like I do the book covers.

The blog is called The Lord’s Lady: Women Growing in the Word, and it’s dedicated to study and meditating on Scripture. I’ve subscribed and am looking forward to digging deeper into faith with other women who share my heart.

For anyone who doesn’t know already, Sandi is a cancer survivor–a miraculous one. A few years ago she was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of T-cell lymphoma. She underwent treatment after treatment, course after course of chemotherapy and radiation that left her body weak and broken. I can’t tell you how many times I got an email saying she’d ended up in the hospital again. Then we thought she was on the mend…that the treatments had worked…that healing had come–only to learn from a Good Friday MRI that she had 5 new tumors.

Sandi knew she wouldn’t survive another round of chemo or radiation. She knew that she couldn’t turn into that shell again, the one that couldn’t get off the couch to take care of her young children. So when the Lord whispered that she should try the natural route, she obeyed, and asked others to step out in faith with her. I joyfully joined the prayers for my dear friend, believing with her that this would work.

Her cancer has been in remission for 2 years now, thanks to faith and vitamin B17. And though Sandi has had a hard time getting back to writing novels, she wants to pour her heart into this blog, and I’m so excited to join in.

So. The header. =) Sandi emailed with details on exactly what she was looking for. A medieval looking woman in the foreground, most of her face not visible. She wanted her to be cradling a sword in her lap. Reverently, almost tenderly. And in the background, a castle.

Armed with those instructions, I went on the hunt for images. I came back with a few possibilities.

The one on the bottom wasn’t holding a sword, of course, but we both liked the lighting and the soft look of her, so she won.

Which meant I had my work cut out for me, LOL. I started, as always, by deleting her background.

I played around a bit to figure out how to input a sword–first trying to have her holding it out before her, in her lap, like Sandi originally envisioned, but the sword got lost against the pale background of the model’s dress. So Sandi said, “Can she be holding it up like the woman in the other picture?”

Could she? Hmm. I thought I could get it close. So I chose a medieval sword that I could use for free from Wikimedia Commons:

And then I posed the model by copying her arm, rotating it, and filling in the empty space it created with her veil.

The hand here isn’t perfect, but I knew it would be covered up once I put the sword into place.

As you can see, the sword stands out far too much…and looks she’s just balancing it on one hand. The image would be cropped to fit on the header, but I still needed to do some playing. I ended up up cutting and pasting the part of the sword that goes off to the left and then changing its opacity so that it looked like the veil was overtop it, and thereby meeting up with her invisible right right.

I also adjusted the color balance on the sword layer, yellowing it to give me the same lighting effect as the model.

And for fun…a little gleam on the blade.

Well, that was the hard part! Next was filling in her background. I found a free image of a castle. There were a ton, but I picked one that looked fairy tale pretty.

Chateau Sully sur Loire

Then, of course, I deleted the background and changed the color balance to match the buttery tones of the rest of the picture.

Isn’t that pretty as a picture? 😉

Now to put the two together. I did a simple blue-gray for sky (adding some low-opacity white for clouds) and green for the ground and plopped them together.

Believe it or not, we’re almost there. 😉 I chose a texture layer to put overtop the whole thing. I wanted something that conveyed light and flame, so I went with this one.

Taking it down to 75% opacity and choosing Lighten as my blending mode, we end up with this.

 I want a bit more detail though…a pattern to add into the corner. I waste some time looking for medieval symbols or engravings, and eventually find, of all things, a free vector with tattoo designs, LOL. In that package I found a fun cross-in-a-circle that hit the right note. So I add that in.

Now all that’s left are the words! I tried a few arrangements and colors, before Sandi said “This arrangement, but how about burgundy? Which was perfect. She also requested that I link the letters together, so voila.

We added the subtitle, and there we have it! I put all those elements together, and we have our lovely final product, ready to be the header on a blog I know will touch hearts.

Check out Sandi’s blog at: http://thelordslady2.blogspot.com/ !!!!

Book Cover Creation – Gathered Waters by Cara Luecht

by Roseanna White | Aug 6, 2014 | Uncategorized

I figured we were due for a cover design post. =) And since I’ve working on one of those this week, now seemed a fine time.

This time around, I’m working on a cover for the second book by one of WhiteFire’s authors, Cara Luecht. This book is set to come out early 2015; we’re in the editing process now, and since we like to have covers well in advance, we got to work on that side of things too. Cara knew what she was looking for in this cover, which always makes my job easier. She wanted a heroine in profile, at the top of the page, with her head only partially visible. She wanted her holding something. She wanted the title in the center of the page, and a scene that ties in with the book below.

So. I started by looking for good images of her heroine, Brianna. Brianna lives in Sweden in 1885; she has blond hair, which would have been worn up, and she would obviously be decked out in the fashions of the day. The story follows some of the first Baptists in Sweden from their home, where they were persecuted, to America. Based on the author’s family history, Gathered Waters isn’t just about religious freedom, though–it’s about a woman’s journey to finding who she is, what she’s called to do, in a world that would keep her in a narrow definition. Brianna has to find the strength and faith within her own heart to undergo this journey.

When looking for a good picture of a historical heroine–as in, one with her hair up–I’ve discovered that it’s often handy to look up photos of brides. That’s where I began. I searched for “blond bride profile,” and I found our Brianna.

I loved the hairstyle, I liked the way she was standing, and she was holding flowers, which would work well for me…sort of. Rather than carrying a bouquet, I wanted her to be holding a single tulip. But this lovely young lady got me started.

The next step was to flip her around and delete everything I didn’t need.

Obviously, deleting her dress leaves her with a floating arm, but that’s okay. I knew I was going to put some historical garb on her. I found some great, free images of 1880 clothing in profile. This is the one we decided on.

Putting the two together was a pretty simple matter of cut and paste…except for that arm.

Pretty funny, right? I know it gave me a giggle to have the arm sprouting from her stomach–but I knew the waist down would be faded out, so I could copy and paste the sleeve into the right place. First though, I had to deal with the color. While I really like the original color of the dress, the title wouldn’t show up well against it, so I wanted it to be white.

I’ve tried a lot of different ways of altering color, but for this one, since I was going white but wanted to preserve the shadows, the way to do it was to go up to Image / Adjustment / Levels.

Now that I had the dress the color I wanted, I worked on the sleeve. I basically just copied that portion of the image, pasted it, rotated it, and deleted the parts I didn’t want. Because the sleeve is large and stiff at the wrist, it covered the arm beautifully, with no need to convince it. And because the image would be faded out, you can’t see where the elbow folds would have been.

In the image above, I’ve also already added another touch I wanted–the color in the collar and buttons. To get that, I just pasted the original dress image overtop and deleted everything but collar and buttons, which were gold to begin with. I like the contrast this achieved.

I also already adjusted her hand a bit–because she was holding a large bouquet, her fingers were spread. To make her hold a single tulip, her fingers needed to be curled tight. So I just deleted the extra length of finger, careful to “trim” it around the knuckles.

So next comes the tulip. I found a picture of white tulips for free.

I copied a flower. I copied a leaf. I used the Warp feature to bend it a bit. Put it in her hand. And voila.

So there’s the top of the book. Now for the bottom. I was thrilled to find this gorgeous picture of a Swedish stream in winter. The water, the snow, the daybreak all play critical roles in the story, and the lighting here was just breathtaking. I am, as I’ve no doubt said before, a sucker for good lighting.

Isn’t it lovely?? Now, if I were to just plop it down, it would look like this.

Of course, I faded the bottom layer too:

We’re getting there! But I didn’t want a white background behind Brianna. So I instead made it a soft yellow and then added some lighting effects.

Muuuuuch better, right? I like how the colors play off each other now, and it’s starting to feel more harmonious. But I don’t just want a smooth texture like that. Upon giving it some thought, I decided a frost or snowflake texture would be cool. At first I think blue would be nice. So I decide on this.

 I try putting it over my cover, fading the opacity to 40%.

Which, um, no. Isn’t what I’m going for. I don’t like how the cyan blue works with the golds. BUT–I’ve learned that you can adjust layers in many different ways. Rather than keep this one “normal,” I choose “divide” in the tab on my toolbar, and suddenly I have exactly what I’m looking for.

Isn’t that texture nice?! I love it. So now for the words. I opt for the simple elegance of SnellRoundhand Script for my font. I decide to make the two beginning letters larger than the rest and line them up. Tossing in a simple divider and Cara’s name, I get this.

I really like this…mostly. But I’d rather, if the G and W are going to cross, that they actually join. I love the harmony of it when letters join up on a cover. So I rasterize those layers so that I can alter the font and create a loop. Like so.

Isn’t that cool? =) So then I just put it onto the cover, and there we have it! The final!