Book Cover: Toxic Designs

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It's been a while since I last posted a cozy mystery book cover on my blog. Here is the cover for "Toxic Designs," part of the "Mysteries Unraveled" series by Annie's Publishing. It's hard to believe that I worked on this cover almost two years ago!

If you haven't seen my previous cozy mystery blog posts, cozy mystery covers tend to have a quaint, small-town setting, a hobby theme (crochet in this case), and a "sinister element" that suggests danger.

For this cover, this is what the AD asked for:

• Bright, airy kitchen setting with lots of sunlight streaming in
• A centerpiece bouquet of oleander on the table
• Two place settings on the table, as if someone was just eating
• A crochet shawl or afghan draped over one of the chairs
• The other chair should be overturned (the first sinister element)
• Crochet supplies on the table
• On the floor in front of the cabinets is a large (maybe 18-inch) decorative planter with a beautiful assortment of foxgloves in full bloom
• In view in the planter is one of those small plastic stake identifiers that normally have plant name and info. In this case the stake has a skull and crossbones on it (the second sinister element)

Quite an order, as usual with these types of covers. Here are the three roughs I sent to the AD:

The AD decided that he liked the third rough best, but requested that I move the table over and change which chair was overturned onto the floor. He also pointed out that I drew the shape of the planter tag thing wrong, and I forgot to add the crocheted afghan (whoops!). He asked me to draw the afghan on the floor, as if it had fallen off the back of the chair.

 I also added a cake onto the countertop. I don't remember why I did that; I probably just wanted to draw cake. Luckily the AD really liked it, because a cake just so happens to figure in the plot in the book, which I didn't know at the time.

Half of the time spent painting this cover was probably spent on those foxgloves!

The cake!

Here is the completed cover!