Allon - Book 1 - 1st Edition (left) is red scanned leather from an old Bible. It has worn corners and a crest scratched out which is a story point. To get the scratches, I took an gray faux leather appointment book and had Shawn gouge it with a knife. I scanned the scratches and blended with the crest and the leather cover in Photoshop.

Allon - Book 1 - 2nd Edition (right) - Struggle for Allon is a remake of the 1st Edition cover with the original title restored after Shawn regained the rights from the publisher. The celtic border and the gold type were achieved through Photoshop layer effects.

Allon - Book 2 - Insurrection takes place in winter so I went for a blue-gray color with bare tree outlines in the background and snowflake ornaments in the corners. The medallion in the center was created from 3 pieces: a celtic raven, a celtic knotted 8 point star, and a black textured 8 point star base. Shawn didn't like the lower case b in KellsFLF so I used Garamond.

For Allon - Book 3 - Heir Apparent, I modified some old Victorian printers ornaments for the corners and bracketing the title. I didn't like the capital H in KellsFLF so I modified it in Illustrator.

Allon - Book 4 - A Question of Sovereignty features a thin celtic border, embossed printers ornaments in the corners, and an eagle crest in the center. The crest is in our dining room.

Allon - Book 5 - Gauntlet is my favorite cover so far. The embossing of the thick celtic border worked very well except for the title area. After different trials I decided to cut the border at the title for the front cover. The back cover has the full border intact. I found a tutorial on how to make gold metallic text with layer effects in Photoshop. I'm very pleased with the results. I created the eagle/crown medallion from a sketch by my daughter, Briana Lamb, in Illustrator. Then I applied similar layer effects in Photoshop to create the gold embossing.