Monday, March 14, 2011

Summer Horse's CreateSpace Cover

Okay.  You didn't ask for it.  But you got it.

I built the cover on the template CreateSpace/Amazon provides when you know what paper you want and how many pages total are inside (that figure gives you the width of the spine).  You get a Photoshop template and a non-Photoshop template and some brief instructions in the zip file download.

I thought it would be 20 layers but it turned out to be 14 since I left out things like the ink blots and the horse show programs.  Like that.

The first real layer is the yellow label.  I made that somewhat transparent so you could see the guidelines underneath, but I also lightened it when it's 100% because it was just too much the color of French's mustard.

I had to build the apple w/ text image.  That was the easy way to do it.

All the other elements I had.  I just had to put them in place and add a drop shadow.  Why do that?  Because I want it to look 3-dimensional.  I want the cover to look like a page from the girls' scrapbook, and they wind up emptying their pockets hence the nails and sugar cubes.  Yeah I know the ribbon isn't accurate in size but so what really.  Yes I know the ribbon bleeds over onto the spine, I wanted that flow.

If you have any questions, ask away.

P.S.  It wasn't that hard.


No comments: