How my cover was created - step by step guide.

I decided to write a post about how my book cover came to life. As you can imagine, I'm very proud of the cover and love it to bits. It was hand-drawn by a very talented artist called Olga. She thought of the whole concept on her own but kept me in the loop with regular updates.
So this is the first picture she sent me for approval:

I didn't like the fact that the guy was sitting at the next table reading a newspaper - I don't know exactly why. Maybe because I had a similar scene in the book and the man reading the newspaper was not the main male character and I thought this may cause confusion. So she changed it:

That was more like it. This time I didn't like the huge letters on the window and she had misspelled Cafe (she's German so she was forgiven). In a few weeks, long Christmas break, illness and a broken computer later, she sent me another picture to look at and she had added colours:

That was the point when I could really imagine the finished product. I loved it.
Next, she sent me another picture, almost fully finished:

Olga had added all those details and I couldn't believe how talented she was. All that was left to add were the eyes at the top and the title:

I didn't feel the blue was right for the cover, I definitely preferred green, so that it corresponded with the eye colour. (Fun fact - the eyes are really Olga's - she cut them out of a photo of herself and made them green)
So, in the end, she made all letters green and I fell in love with the finished product - it was exactly what I wanted!

Taaa-daaaa!

The cover creation may seem like an easy, straightforward process but it wasn't. It was stretched along 3 months, with many ups and downs. But at the end of the day, what matters is that it turned out amazingly well. And it feels very personal to me because it is my very first cover for my very first published novel, I was involved in it every step of the way and, let's face it, my cover artist has her eyes integrated as an irreplaceable part of my book. I wouldn't change a thing.