I went out with my camera this morning, and armed with a few $1 bills. My original plan was to hit a few yard sales and take some pictures, in no particular order. Welp, I hit a few yard sales anyway. Very few. I pulled into a couple of store parking lots and pulled back out. I needed a couple of odds and ends for the house, but I couldn’t make myself go into WalMart and its ilk, no matter what I needed to buy.
I hit a couple of more yard sales, thinking maybe I’d luck out, because what I needed is actually a yard-sale staple: kitchen storage jars.
Yeahhh… no such luck. Today was all baby stuff, clothes, and – in one place – camping supplies. Nuttin’ hunny.
It had also been an extremely stressful week, and my brain said, “Screw it. This time you’re gonna buy new, just get it done.” So I compromised, went to one of my favorite outlet stores, and bought all the stuff I’ve been putting off for the house. There was no single humongous thing, but I still ended up dropping about $60 all told on various little household this-es and thats-es.
My “big ticket” items from the haul were a shower curtain and some new flatware. I paid just over $20 for 2x 20-piece sets of flatware. I swear to God, forks and spoons grow legs and walk off over time, no matter how careful I am. I’m sure the kids have nothing whatsoever to do with that.
In the big-name store next door, the cheapest set they carried was $100. Could I have paid the $100? Yes. Was I going to pay $100?? Oh HELL no.
After much staring and not much liking of the crown I was building for my book cover, I decided to ditch it and take a different approach. The sequel to my dragonspiel, as Dangerspouse once called it, will be called Crown of Dragons. And yup, I wanted a dragon crown – which you can’t exactly buy off the shelf at Wally World. Or anywhere else, as it turns out. I tried for the baroque look using foam sheets, hot glue, silver paint, and plastic “jewels”. And it turned out about as awesome as foam sheets, hot glue, silver paint, and plastic jewels. Cute for a kids’ costume, but for a book cover? Nope.
So I went back to the drawing board. Or more accurately, to the craft store. I took wide black scalloped lace for my base, using aforementioned foam inside to give it shape; add black paint to cover up the original gray of the foam; then “frost” that puppy with silver paint, to give it the sense of antique silver or pewter. And you know what? I LIKE IT.
It’s not done yet – I need to go back over it with more silver paint, and there will be silver dragons (fake silver, obviously) at intervals around the band, but I really like how this looking. (The silver dragons are a bunch of dragon charms I ordered through ebay. Funny part is they’re being shipped from Phoenix!) MUCH better than its predecessor.
The inside foam support will need to be painted black, and I’ll be doing a fair amount of Photoshop magic to get it like I want it; but overall it’s imminently better for my purposes than anything else I was going to find. On top of which, it means my cover for this book will be unique.
Buying stock photos, you KNOW other people are buying ’em, too. In the cover critique group where I’m an admin, we talk about some of the same images and models being used for umpteen covers. What’s more, book covers don’t come cheap. A custom cover design will run you $250-500, and uses stock photos in that price range. I know people – indie writers, mind you – who pay $2000 or more for their covers. Those are the truly unique covers, though – commissioned painting or photography so nobody else has anything like it.
I ain’t paying $2K for my book covers. However, I’m game for spending $30 or so on the stuff to make a crown. Saddest part is I bought some things to go with it that won’t ever be used – there are some sparkly itty bitty rhinestones which are out of sync with the rest of what’s happening now, so they’ll be put back for a future project instead.
Hoping I can kidnap my teenage granddaughter for a photo shoot soon, too. I’d like her to be my protagonist’s model if I take the Atlantis book into a series.
“Dragonspiel”? Bwahahaaaa! What a hoot! That guy’s a freakin’ genius, I tell ya. Damn.
Ok, that’s it. When I hit the lottery I’m gonna buy you a 3-D printer so you can crank out blingtastic crowns by the pallet load. Still, until then I thought the one you came up with was really excellent. No, I mean really! I like it a lot.
Hey, if you ever need a non-professional-but-maybe-acceptable photo of anything that’s not your granddaughter, I can give it a shot (so to speak). More than happy to take the ol’ Nikon out for a spin whenever I can, and the best thing is…for you: gratis!
Ok, maybe send me a spoon.
xoxoxox
Bwahaha! SPOON!
I never thought of a 3D printer version, but that could work too, I guess, couldn’t it? The original version had dragon heads for points of the crown. I painted it up with silver and went from there. It looked sort-of okay in the beginning but the more bling I added, the worse it got. It was too thin with just the foam and paint, but the bling tackified it all to heck.
This one’s going easy on the bling, for several reasons. And I realized after the fact, since one of my MCs from the first book was a weaver, a lacey variety works dovetails with the story better, anyway. I think once it’s all said and done it’ll do exactly what I want it to do.
I like the crown and I expect it will be fantastic when you have completed it to your satisfaction. Good buy on the “silverware”. Funny how those things seem to disappear and then, usually, once you have replaced them, the missing items show up.
I doubt these will show up. They’ve been with us for at least a couple of moves now and I suspect at least a few of them were carried off by sprites. They went the way of odd socks and Tupperware lids 😉
That crown will be so great! I can’t wait to see the dragon part. Don’t forget to post it.❤️🦊
Thanks, Hil! You should do a similar project for your next women’s meeting. After all, we women have to build our own crowns, then remember to wear them, day by day!