I thought I’d share today how I came up with the cover for The Christmas Bargain.
The two things that were most important to me were to 1. design a cover that looked Christmas-y and 2. design a cover that hinted at a Victorian time period.
I started with the background.
I liked the design of this graphic although the color was all wrong.
So I went into Photoshop and played around with the color settings.
And came up with this. Much better for my intended purpose.
I used the eyedropper tool to select one shade of green and created a green background then added cream stripes. I purposely placed the stripes at different widths because I thought it was more visually interesting than having them all perfectly aligned.
Once I had those two pieces together, I added a dark green stripe, bordered with gold to join the two art elements.
Next came the burgundy box that has a really fun shape and a Victorian feel.
You can barely see it, but the box has a slight edging of gold.
And of course, I needed some holly. I layered it around the edges of the frame in various sizes.
I absolutely love this holly graphic.
The final graphic piece was the main photo. I wanted something that alluded to a bargain or agreement, something that conveyed trust or encouragement.
This graphic did the job nicely. It also gave it a formal, Victorian feel. And it was quite helpful to have the black in the photo which worked perfectly for placing some text (the font is Birmingham). I feathered the edge of the graphic so it looked softer.
Finally, I chose the title font, Chopin.
It is in the same shade of green as the stripe and outlined in gold. The swooping C and B really set it off.
Pulling it all together, I liked the way it looked. A lot.
