New cover... new life!

After hours of time, painful hand cramps, computer blurred eyes and a sore butt, I'm proud to present the new cover for The Summer of the Frogs:

More on Covers... the Concept

On talking about how important covers are, I've been wanting to redo the cover for The Summer of the Frogs for some time.  I believe the cover is affecting my sales or lackthereof.  It's a good story; it deserves a good cover that will draw people in.

After mentally going through several concepts, I went to sleep with an idea floating around in my head.  Upon waking, I still liked the idea, so went forward with nailing the concept down.

Right now, it's in the sketched concept stage with a generic font slapped on.

But before I go forward with the hours and hours of tedious coloring, I'd like to get some feedback.

Let me know what you think of this concept.  I'd deeply appreciate it!

The kajal project- almond kohl eyeliner

This post is inspired by a couple of amazing people over on the Possets perfume forum.  :)

 Here's what you'll need to start:

two pop cans filled about halfway with water for stability
an old pan lid
a meat fork
a barbeque lighter
aluminum foil
raw almonds
not shown - olive oil and metal spatula

Lightly coat the underside of your old pan lid with olive oil, set the lid across the pop cans.  Carefully stick two almonds on the meat fork prongs and light them with the bbq lighter.  It may take about a minute for the almonds to catch on fire.  When they do, hold the flaming almonds under the pan lid approximately 1inch to 2inches from the lid.  Hold until the almonds burn themselves out.  This may take any where from three to five minutes.

 After burning six almonds, your lid should look like this.

Use the spatula to scrape the soot.  After one scrape, you can see, there is a considerable amount of soot collected.

Continue scraping the soot, then tap it out onto a sheet of aluminum foil.

Pour the collected soot into a small container.  This is two batches of six almonds each batch.

The burnt remains of twelve almonds.  Those are going on our compost pile for the garden.  :)


To apply:  dip a rounded toothpick in olive, coconut or almond oil.  Then twirl the lightly oiled tip in the soot.  Tap off excess.  Use the side of the toothpick to line your eyes!

There is a learning curve to applying this amazingly black eyeliner, but a little practice is worth the effort.  Good luck!