Due to high industry demand, I'm finally jumping on the "soup cover" bandwagon. #whowouldathunkit

When working with stock photos of people, it's especially important to whip your selected images into highly unique cover art—the further you deviate from the original aesthetic/cropping of the photo, the less likely you are to see another cover that looks nearly identical to yours! (See an especially extreme past transformation here.)

Coming soon to my website and Etsy. If you'd like first dibs on this cover, please send me an email!

Oh, man. I finished over a dozen covers last week—that means I'm set for at least three month's worth of these posts. Because my volume of output has increased that substantially, I might start featuring 2-3 covers per week so that you won't see stuff I did in May only just showing up here in September.

Here are two covers that are currently available for sale on kmwritingdesign.com and Etsy. (I decided to start selling on Etsy to gain more exposure; of course, the whole "one-author-per-cover" thing hasn't—and will never— change. Once a design is sold on one site or the other, it's GONE!)

The Secret Life was one of those labor-intensive covers that didn't completely 'click' until the last minute. The version I posted it to my writer's group for feedback had the larger set of poppies coming straight up from behind the title. There were many suggestions thrown around, but the one that worked out was to move them to the side (as seen above). I may or may not have died a little inside from my lapse in judgement, but hell...people don't always nail these things on the first try, right? ...Right? 

Please tell me I'm right. 

First of all, I LOVE that those aren't even her eyes. I don't know what led me to think that I could get away with such trickery, but for a freakalicious cover like this...well, I'd say it works. Unlike The Secret Life, this one fell into place like

...which was, surprisingly, actually the case with the majority of the covers from this last batch. Like with all other things that require practice, the ability to visualize and then pretty accurately realize a specific design does in fact develop over time! (This totally contradicts what I blathered on about in last week's post, of course.)

*raises glass, takes sip*


Until next time, here's a preview of more Making of Monday covers to come!

Available for sale on kmwritingdesign.com.

I had a few false starts with this cover. I was going for something simplistic, but a few underwhelming concepts convinced me to go in a whole different direction with it. That's the thing about design—sometimes you think you know exactly what to do, but the truth is that until you put the design down and look at it in real life, you don't know jack shit about how it's actually going to turn out.

At a certain point, so much of any given design comes down to trial, error, and a few happy accidents. ;-)

This is the first Making of Monday that features one of the pre-made covers for sale on Kat Mellon Writing & Design. After a long period of doing nothing but illustrated covers, having something like this to work on sure was nice!

As you can see, I'm pretty thorough with editing my stock images. Because standard stock images are so accessible and non-exclusive, it's important that you give your images a unique twist—and, in some cases, alter the original image beyond recognition—to avoid one day stumbling across a cover that looks pretty damn close to yours.

So tell me—of the two versions, which do you prefer and why?