Celebrating 200 posts for World Problems and Randomness

For those of you who don't know, "World Problems and Randomness" is my other blog, or rather, my main blog. Since it has reached, or will reach 200 posts, I'm gonna post some legal designs here as celebration. These aren't covers, just designs.

I would like to thank, The One and Only for making the awesome legal logo :) Now I don't have to worry about someone stealing my stuff :)

Let me just say, I really like how the ripples in the back turned out. And how matching the font is and the cool thing going on with the flower petals. I know it's not something you do, you know, praise your own covers but, hey, why not?
We're celebrating 200 posts so, yeah.

So this title suddenly popped into my head; "Gamma Rays & Helium" and I knew exactly what I wanted on the blue-tile-diamond background. I also almost immediately after making the cover, came up with the subtitle, "the Ultimate Collection of Fictional Memories". Idk why but it HAD TO BE "Gamma Rays & Helium". Talk about randomness, eh? :P

Then I thought I'd play around with the blue-tile-diamond background. Some how this turned out to be some kind of Roman Empire / Gladiator thing. The stars on the "I"s, I did them myself :) After I made this one, I immediately felt that this should be a two-part.

So here's the sequel.

I looked up the synonym for "pint" and came up with "quart". The star sequence thing on the bottom might have taken me up to forty-min to create and get just right. I tried to make it look a little sparkly on the trophy-like pitcher thing. I wanted to do something fancy with the letters but...well, there are no "I"s as you can see. I had to settle with adding something to the bottom which looked a little lonely without anything.

And then I did this one just a few minutes ago. Well, by the time you read this centuries might have passed by but anyway. The Idea Behind the Cover (this one has an Idea), is a little girl named Alexia who joins her local ballet community but she struggles because she feels like "Alex", a little boy, inside. She wants to be a little boy and does a lot of "boy" roles for plays because she is already quite boyish. But then, gender restrictions start to hit her as teachers don't really know what to do with her because she doesn't want to be a girl anymore but she LOOKS like a girl... Well, basically a story of a eleven-year-old transgender child that battles with the restrictions of her small community. Will she, or he, be accepted for who they are at the end?

The scenery is actually,

this one, turned to the side. Can you see it? :P


So that's all of them!

Happy Writing Figs, and have a nice day everyone else! :D

(Go to World Problems and Randomness and check out post No. 200! :D )

ColorMeCovers!

In my group "Covermakers Unite" on Figment, I started a challenge for practice.

It's the ColorMeCovers Challenge :)

Here are my ColorMeCovers. The awesome (and legal) logo was made by The One and Only from the Randomly Wonderful World of Fig :)

 

 

Yay :D Rainbow!

All of these are legal covers and copyrighted.

Happy Writing and Creating! :D

Premade Covers 3

Imagine a group of elementary school girls who like hats and decide to make their very own club, "The Hat Club". What they do there and what drama happens is all up to the writer. The author name is in a font called "Mountains of Christmas". Not the right season? But it's the right look, isn't it? The playful sort of feel.

This one, I wanted to have a little fun with a circular kind of title space. I used "Almost like the blues" for the title and "Fountain Avenue" for the author name. The picture itself has many many color effects on it.

Here's the original pic I used for "One Way Only" so you can see the difference. Quite a change, isn't it? :)

So I found this really lovely picture of a daisy and I wanted to do something with it. Something simple. I looked up the synonym for "wallflower" and came back with words that meant "watcher" or "observe", hence, "The Observer". Both title and author name are the same font. It is a new font I downloaded called "WIRED saj" and it is AWESOME! :D  For a story, I would aim for a bit of a steampunk kind of thing. The frame, in case you wondered, was not on the original...

Okay, this is the original. I know, not so different but I did like the original look and I wanted to keep it as best as I could. I did change the hue a teeny bit though.

Well, that's all folks :D

Happy Writing!

Premade Covers 2

So I found these very lovely legal pics (one of a girl and the other of a close-up violet) and decided they were destined to go together. One of the flower meanings for a violet is "daydreams". I used "Vladimir Script" for the title and "Poor Richard" for the Author Name. Finally, a bit of Tranquil filter for the overall pic. The Title actually has two white overlays in Bold to give that glow. It looked a little bare so I put a bit of PicMonkey garnish on top. The violet pic, I put on the girl pic as a layer and just carved away the parts I didn't need. If you have Photoshop Skills I bet you can carve it out quicker but even if you don't, now you know it can be done.

I found this girl (legal pic) who had this Eastern Caravan look so I thought I'd do some kind of caravan thing with camels (legal pic). I used FotoFlexer to cut the girl out of the black background she came with and used the "Add layer" effect in FotoFlexer to paste her on top of the camels. Since the sizing was awkward it took a few tries to get it just right. I used "Calamity Jane NF" for "Dreaming" and "Caravan". For the "of the" and the Author Name I used "Annie Use Your Telescope". There are also a bunch of filters to make the girl and the background blend together a bit more.

I found this legal pic of a feather with a white background and decided to make a simplistic cover. This one is different from the others in that I only used PicMonkey to resize and crop the cover. I used fonts from iPiccy as well as color effects and the overlay effect of the sky. The boarder is also iPiccy. If you have never messed with iPiccy it is a cool photo-editing site with awesome overlay effects. You can also make your fonts squished looking or give it stripes or circular designs. The boarders are awesome as well. However, if you want a large variety of font choices, and if that is what you primarily look for in a photo-editing site, then iPiccy may not be for you. They do have awesome fonts but not as large a choice as, say, PicMonkey. With PicMonkey you can link your own fonts to the site and use them so the choices are limitless.

Finally, my horror/Harry-Potter-vibe/goth-vibe one. The Barn Owl I cut out using FotoFlexer from another legal photo. Barn Owls are also called Ghost Owls, Death Owls and many more. You might be surprised to know that "Death Owl Manor" font is called "Mountains of Christmas". Author name is "New Yorker". I tried to blend the background and the owl using a bunch of filters. Idk what can come out of this premade cover but perhaps someone can have fun with it. Barn Owls are freaky things. They do this thing called "silent flight" where they fly without a sound and then BAM! attack their prey. Their screech is also apparently very eerie.

Premade Covers 1



This one, I just added the Title and Author Name design. I wanted it to have a sort of urban, city look so I chose Agency FB. If you don't know what that is, go to Font 1001 website and check it out. I thought it was perfect for the urban feel. I probably could have made the overall pic a little brighter, but it seemed fine the way it was. Urban, slightly sad or melancholy. Maybe even longing. If anyone wants this pic, it'll be exciting to see what story might go behind it :)

Okay, so I had this (legal) pic in my legal pic file for quite sometime. I originally downloaded it for one of my requests in Magic Cover Shop on Figment. But I found a better one and decided not to use this. It's a nice pic, just I had no idea what to do with it, you know? These people, in my opinion, didn't look like a couple. More like friends. Hence the title "Just Friends" and the subtitle "No more, no less." Perhaps someone can wield a story about two very good male and female friends who each have their own love interests outside their friendship. But in the end, the friendship never dies. Kind of like the happy-ending version of the Friend Zone, I suppose. The reason, the fonts are green...I had spring in mind.

I actually really like how this came out. I'm not gonna lie. You might be able to see that the frosted tree branches fade out in the background. Actually, it's an overlay on top of the one in the "front", or more clearer version. It just appeared very nicely in the back without being so visible on the original pic. So I flipped it and faded it so that it looked as natural as possible, adding depth to the cover. The word "Frostbite" has both a gray title and a light blue title. "Dusk" has a very light orange title and a gray title. "at" is just black faded. The Author Name is "Friandise NormalDemo" black and faded and the Title is "Poor Richard" also faded and overlayed...it might have been lightened...I don't really remember since I did make these a while back. The banners behind are both white faded. I also put a lot of filters on the original pic (legal). Some Cross Process and I think I put some black and white fade on it. If you use PicMonkey, you know what I'm talking about. I think I also added a teeny bit of Dusk effect, as well. Idk what you can get out of this but maybe someone can get something out of it.

Designs Using Non-Copyrighted Legal Pictures

This is a little something I made for Halloween.

This one is actually a two-picture layering blend.
The girl and the wall with the window are two separate pictures.

 

I love Lindsey Stirling and her videos inspired me to create this :)

 

I made this one by layering the same picture multiple times.
I wanted the layering to be like the waves of a heartbeat.



Title: Trying to forget ME
Idea: About a girl who is trying to hide her true self
because she thinks people will not accept her.
The fading glow around her body represents her true self fading.
This one also has the girl with the umbrella layered twice to add depth.


Aztec Mythology in the Modern World Series Idea

So I had this butterfly pic legal from Pixabay and I wanted to use it somewhere...so I wikied butterfly and found that, in Aztec Mythology, there is this warrior goddess called Itzpapalotl. According to our good friend Wikipedia, Itzpapalotl means "Obsidian Butterfly" or "clawed butterfly" and she is said to be "a fearsome skeletal warrior goddess who ruled over the paradise world of Tamoanchan, the paradise of victims of infant mortality and the place identified as where humans were created," (Wiki: Itzpapalotl).


And Wiki gives us a nice background mythology bit of Itzpapalotl and it's not exactly pretty...


You can read it if you like, or you can scroll past it to see the covers.


"According to the Manuscript of 1558, section VII, Itzpapalotl was one of two divine 2-headed doe-deers (the other one being Chimalman) who temporarily transformed themselves into women in order to seduce men. Itzpapalotl approached the two "cloud serpents named Xiuhnel [ˈʃiwnel] and Mimich [ˈmimit͡ʃ]", who transformed themselves into men (so as to disguise themselves when all the others of the Centzonmimixcoa had been slain in the ambush?). To Xiuhnel, Itzpapalotl said ""Drink, Xiuhnel." Xiuhnel drank the blood and then immediately lay down with her. Suddenly she ... devoured him, tore open his breast. ... Then Mimich ... ran and ... descended into a thorny barrel cactus, fell into it, and the woman fell down after him," (Wiki: Itzpapalotl).

Here's the link for the information: Wikipedia: Itzpapalotl

I don't really understand exactly where the blood came from and what woman fell down...but anyway.

Idea Behind the Cover: Itzpapalotl had been punished from killing men so she was locked inside some ancient stones in an Aztec ruin somewhere. One day, an archaeologist discovers these strange colored stones with intricate butterfly designs on them and brings them back to his lab. Taking of the stones or maybe some other trigger unlocks the cage that Itzpapalotl was locked in. She rises from the stones to take revenge on the sorcerers or the person who imprisoned her into the stones.

Time frame: Our modern world.

Place: Central Mexico, Aztec ruins, and maybe sometimes in the boarder towns in the U.S.

So, I thought what could be the sequel? I looked up how to say "blood" in Nahuatl and found that it was "Eztli".

Idea Behind the Cover: I tried to make it look bloodstained. And of course the butterfly represents Itzpapalotl. This whole book takes place during the revenge of Itzpapalotl and how the main characters, maybe the archaeologist is involved, counter the wrath of this warrior goddess. It becomes so devastating that at a point, the rivers run red with blood, hence "Rivers of Eztli". The book ends with it seemingly looking like there is no hope for anyone left.

This is actually two layers of the same butterfly. You can probably tell by the wings.

What is left after a fire burns? Ash.

Idea Behind the Cover: This is the last book in the Itzpapalotl series. The main character, maybe with help from someone, tries to find a way to defeat Itzpapalotl. They struggle and struggle until finally they find a way. They start the process, maybe some kind of ritual, hidden from Itzpapalotl. A sacrifice of something? Maybe some dark magic stuff? Finally Itzpapalotl goes up in flames and, near the end of the book, turns to ashes, falling down into the earth in the Aztec ruins. The ashes sink into the ground which also burns into ashes hence "Descend into the Ashes". Finally, the wrath of Itzpapalotl is over. The survivors left must rebuild the city or the area where they are.

THE END!