This particular customer of mine always presents me with challenging ideas for cover designs.  In this case, he wanted me to make an album for some long-time friends and fishing buddies of his.  He liked my "leaf on the water" book covers but wanted this cover to feature a surfacing Atlantic salmon.  Incorporating a raised/relief fish design with my raised water ring design was supremely challenging, but I was very happy with the results.  This is a larger-sized album with 50 pages that are each 10" wide by 12" tall, resulting in a book that is roughly 2" thick.  The album features a raised design of a salmon surfacing to go after a fishing fly on a cover of antique blue cowhide (this leather has a bit of a mottled look that looks, to me, like water).  The salmon's body underwater was accented with gold pigment for a "faded" look while its head was covered with gold foil leaf to indicate that it was above the water.  I also added a taxidermy eye to the fish.  The gold fishing fly was stamped onto the cover using a custom metal die and gold stamping foil.  The names of the recipients were also added to the front cover.  My customer wanted a school of swimming fish stamped on the back cover and spine in silver and pewter foil (this was accomplished using a custom metal die and hot foil stamping) and some lettering was added to the spine with moveable metal type, hot foil stamping, and pewter stamping foil.  The raised/relief fish is carved from the underlying cover board while the raised water rings are created using a process I'd rather not reveal.  Much time was spent in the carving and execution of this cover design.  I never would have thought of doing this without my customer's request!

A book like this would cost around $900.

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