I am really proud of this fantasy novel cover. I was lucky to find some perfect images on Dreamstime.com and together they are awesome.

I’ve been working on a new series for author Rebecca Goings; The Desert Princes of Jikkar. The series will be published by Carnal Passions starting in the next month (I think). So keep your eyes open for them because they look very cool.

Here are the two covers I’ve already completed. What do you think?

I’ve been pretty busy this week but I thought I’d take a moment to share with you my newest cover design. Done for R.G. Porter (a long time client) for her novel Shades of Night.

For the entire month of June we are offering 10% off all freelance custom art orders and all premade art purchases in celebration of my 30^th birthday on June 10^th.

That’s right, for the ENTIRE month of June! So mark your calendars, make an order, and help me turn 30 in style!

We’ll be updating our premade section with new art so come back throughout the month and check things out.

Hi everyone, Amanda here.

We’re in the process of updating our website to include our new stock photography and video services. It involves changing our website host and completely re-uploading all our images. So please be patient.

We’ll be back as soon as possible. Sorry for any inconvenience this causes. If you need something feel free to email us at contact@razzdazzdesign.com!

There is a little known fact that most authors don’t know or understand. Most small and/or electronic publishers allow you to supply your own cover art!

Yes, that’s right. Did your manuscript get picked up by a small publisher but you look at their website and cringe at the cover art? No problem! You can hire a freelance artist. Most cover artists do freelance work all the time for low, low prices. Sometimes they even give authors special deals, I know I do.

So don’t get frustrated or upset over bad cover art! Take charge and hire an artist to your own wishes and standards. It will help you sleep easier at night, trust me.

This week has been very busy for me. I’ve started work on the ARe charity campaign covers plus I have my regular workload. Busy, busy, busy. On Wednesday alone I did SIX covers! Some mockups, some finals.

I’ll be sharing some new covers on my website & portfolio soon so keep your eyes open.

All Romance ebooks is hosting a charity campaign for the Heart Association. 28 books published in the month of Feb.

Be sure to check it out @ All Romance ebooks.

I’ll post the finalized covers as they’re finished so keep your eyes on my website & portfolio for the first look!

I’ve been featured in an article/interview at Cover Cafe!

Behind The Scenes
With Amanda Kelsey – Graphic Artist

Cover Cafe is pleased to feature a new graphic artist and also one of our newest committee members, Amanda Kelsey. Amanda has an interesting bio and a definite flair for graphic design. She has created some beautiful and distinctive covers for ebooks and we are fortunate to have her expertise involved with the Cover Cafe annual contest. The only down side for Amanda is that she cannot vote on ballots featuring her cover creations. Welcome to Cover Cafe Amanda!

Q: What is your educational background and how did you become an illustrator for both print and ebooks? Which format is your favorite?

I have a bachelors degree in, believe it or not, theater arts. And actually I never studied graphic design or even had the idea to go into the field until much later. I have always been a creative person. Painting has been a hobby of mine since I was very young and I studied many forms of art throughout high school and college but always for the fun of it, never for a career choice, until about two years ago. I became involved in a small online writers group and through that I was educated about the electronic publishing industry. I began seeing ebook covers that inspired me and soon I met other artists. Not long after I tried designing a few test covers and found a new challenge. I love being a cover artist and I’m always reading books and tutorials to become better.

I didn’t start off applying for print work but sort of fell into it through chance. I really can’t say one or the other is my favorite. I do like the challenge of creating a print cover only because I haven’t had the opportunity to do many of them so far. But all my ebook designs are made to print specs so there is not much difference, to me, in the design process.

FOR MORE VISIT COVER CAFE!

This past week has been quite busy. I received three assignments on the same day and all of them were due in one or two weeks. Luckily, I had nothing better to do.

Divided Hearts by Terry O’Reilly is a sequel to Awakening recently published by Aspen Mountain Press. Therefore, I wanted to give Divided Hearts a similar design as the cover I did for Awakening. I was able to use the same colors, textures, and font which really connected the designs. Even better, I found stock photos that fit in a similar layout as the first book. All this combined to create a recognizable connection between the two books. Even though this design was fairly simple it took me about 4 hours to complete the full res design.

Artifact by Melody Knight is one of my favorite designs so far. Part of the story takes place in New Zealand where the couple has some fun in a geothermal pool. I found the photo of the couple kissing and thought it would be great for a muted background. Merged with the image of the hot spring surrounded by trees it creates depth and adds to the sexy feel.

For the foreground, I chose the image of the nude female back. I smoothed the skin using a smudge technique I recently learned and adjusted the shadows and highlights with the burn/dodge tool. I also added some extra strands of hair to give it a wilder, realistic look. For the title, I added an outer glow in a soft green tone. Needless to say, this took a lot of time and was a lot of work but I really like how it turned out.

Another favorite design of mine is for Ominous Night by Tania Walsh, soon to be published by Mystic Moon Press. This short story is about a woman who hunts mutants. The author gave me some great descriptions of the setting and character and I did my best to create them. The background is an old building (supposed to be a dingy pub) surrounded by a wrought iron fence. I found the gate image, cleaned it up, darkened it a bit, and placed it in front of the building.

In the original foreground image, the woman had blonde hair and a pink t-shirt. I used the soft light function to change her hair color. Then I selected the pink shirt using the magnetic lasso tool. First, I desaturated the selection then I adjusted the hue/saturation with the colorize box selected. Using the burn/dodge tool I adjusted the highlights and shadows before rendering an light source.

I am extremely pleased with how this design turned out. I hope the author loves it as much as I do.