Simple and Color-themed: Ravenous and Shellack

After looking at various "simple" covers, I tried my hand at them.

First, I chose a simple texture background instead of a scenery like I usually do.

Then, I chose a simple vector image (legal image) and made it my staple piece in the cover.

I wanted to go for a "middle glow" look so I added two white circles with one being just the outer line with the inner color as "transparent" (though transparent isn't a color...or is it?)

I then enhanced the reddish, brownish corner (the one on the bottom left in the textural picture above) using PicMonkey's Vampire-themed effect Nosferatu Dawn.

Here are the results.

The title "Ravenous" plays on "raven" and "us". What kind of story can you imagine with this?

As you can see, both crow (or raven) and the text are overlayed.


I wanted to make a sequel with this cool (legal) shell vector I had. Thank you, Pixabay.

So, I went on Google to look up some kind of terrible or dramatic word that started with "shell" and found a slang word "shellack" which means to strike severely and you can find it here.

I did the same glow circle thing in the middle and used the same font (with overlaying effect) for the title. The shell is overlayed twice with the first layer faded just a tad so it's not too dark and matches with the raven in the first cover.

I chose a different simple textual background.

The only thing I did was add some red edges using "Dark Edges" effect in PicMonkey and add "scratches" which I found in Pixabay as "dirty" vector image. The scratches were to emphasize the beating or striking and possible abuse or fighting.

And here is the result.

From Ravenous to Shellack...I wonder what kind of story this is? Perhaps some kind of dystopian story?

Here are the covers side by side.

Ravenous comes first and then Shellack.

What do you think? Would you buy books with these covers? And, what do you think the story would be? Tell me your thoughts :)

See ya later, alligators! :D


P.S.
The pictures and vectors used are all from Pixabay. The font is vtks classicuda 3 and for personal use meaning that I cannot sell without buying a commercial license from the creator of the font. Well, don't worry, I don't plan on selling anything. This is solely for my personal enjoyment :)

Book Cover Designing: Advice from a Designer on Canva

I just read through this article and it was certainly helpful and inspirational. I often tend to make my covers really fancy because I like fantasy-esque images. But then I realized the best covers with the most impact do not have to be OMG SO FANTASY! all the time.

This article that I will link HERE gives good advice on how to make an eye-catching cover with great balance in everything.

For me in my personal covermaking experience, I found that a cover is not just about the image but also about the font, the placement of the font, how accurately the cover matches the story and/or it's message, and even font size. I suppose if I was an art student I'd learn all these things but I'm not so it took me years to really realize what covermaking actually was.

I think some of my premade legal covers follow some of the suggestions from the article, what do you think?

But anyway, if any of you amateur cover designers out there are taking a look at my blog, hopefully the link will help you out and inspire you, too :)

Now off to some covermaking!

See ya later, alligators! :D

IMPORTANT: About Copyright Stuffs (Pixabay and other)

This is an important notice. I have been reading up on various copyright rules of Pixabay (where I get most of my legal pics) and decided to make this post.

Unless I explicitly state that the photo is my own original photo, you can assume that the other photos are not original. Typically what I do when making a photo-edit (is what I call them), is gather a bunch of good-looking legal photos from Pixabay or from Google Image ("insert random word here" wallpaper) and put them on top of each other.

Basically what I do is carve the photos and mash them into each other using cut-out, overlay, and collage techniques. In a sense, you can say that the editing is owned by me. I made the wonderful pic look epic. Get it? Epic? :P  And...the pun has been lost.

Some photo-edits I did and posted in my main blog "World Problems and Randomness" are not legal, meaning that I am messing with pics that other people have a rights to claim.  These I cannot sell and will not sell, don't worry :)

From now on I will make sure to let you know what exactly my photos are made of just so that I don't get fined. Of course you can say that lots of people are messing around with other people's photos without their consent and posting them on their blogs without their consent so what's the biggy deal?

But the thing is, it's always good to be kind to others by not claiming an entire photo as your own if the original was someone else's. I wouldn't want someone doing that to my photos so why would I do it to them?

Statements for Each Case

In the cases where I have used an original photo to make a photo-edit, these are copyrighted by me.

In the cases where I have used an original photo AND a photo that is not my own from some random person, I will post the original photo of mine so you can see what parts are of my photo.

In the cases where I have used some random person's photo, not under creative commons, don't worry, I won't sell these or even claim them as my own.

In the cases where I have used some landscape photos or photos of objects from Pixabay, and I am not selling them, I will not say anything because Pixabay says it is okay.

In the cases where I have used some landscape photos or photos of objects from Pixabay, and I AM SELLING THEM, I will say something, of course, and also ask the owner of the photo if they will mind it or not.

Finally, of course, if I'm selling any photo-edits using pics from Pixabay, I will ask the owner if it is okay or not.

End of Statements for Each Case


Pixabay has this thing about identifiable people and buildings may be protected so it might not be good to claim anything about them without asking the original owners. This gets tricky because who are these "identifiable people"? What if I don't know them?

With this case, I'll just have to ask the original owner IF I am selling them.

If not, I'll just say
it's from Pixabay.

That rhymed :)

My shop logo which I use for covers posted to this blog.
This is made by an amazing Figgy a.k.a The One and Only (Tony).

Seven Gardens not Seven Seas

When you think about pirates, you might think about the Seven Seas. This cover plays on that idea of the Seven Seas but this one is the Seven Gardens. The background is a mash up of four different parts. Can you tell? They are...

Covers I have made in MCS: Enjoy! :D

2016 COPYRIGHTED N.J. FOLETTIA @ Magic Cover Shop: Figment.

(the edited pics, the collage is copyrighted by me but the pics are either from random Google Image searches or from Pixabay. I have made sure that these covers will not be used commercially and be confined to Figment use only.)

Okay, these are all the covers I have made for people on Figment. Some are legal, some are not, well, that's kinda how it goes in Figment's Cover Studio. This isn't all of them, actually. Before I had MCS, I was already making covers for people for free. But...they weren't very good and a lot of them were just words on top of pictures.

Some of these might fool you cuz they do look like I just put fancy words on top of pictures but only about 7 of them are like that and out of those 7, about four or five of them had a bit of color editing done to the picture. Sometimes a cover can take ten-fifteen minutes to make. But most often they take from one to two hours.

For one cover? Yes, for one cover.

It's long, but I do enjoy it. I'll probably be doing this for a long, long time :)

Maybe, maybe someday when I have money and time, I will learn how to use Photoshop and make covermaking my side-job or something like that :P

See ya later, alligators! :D

Magic Cover Shop Under Construction: Day 2

Check it out and scroll down.

You will see this crazy collage of a bunch of covers I made for people in the shop. I counted them. I have made 125 different covers for people, some of them recurring customers.

But 125! Accomplishment! :D

Just needed to say it :) I've come such a long way.

See ya later, alligators! :D

Magic Cover Shop Under Construction: Day 1

I think I can brag about this. Some of you might not have known my cover shop on Figment before, but let me just say it was a complete mess with a banner I made from wallpapers, sample covers were all different sizes, there were just waaayyy too many words, and nothing was neat.

If I went to my shop, I would get tired of reading all those words, geesh! :/

BUT I worked TWO and a HALF HOURS to get it all cleaned up. I had meant to do this for a long time and FINALLY I have done it! :D

I gave it a new LEGAL banner I made myself, a face for my shop (a Magic Fox!), and even though the Cover Example section is under construction, I have a cool logo for it.

Please, check out this hard work :)

And may the foxes be with you! (Star Wars reference).