HEY SUCKERS!

   Since I've been asked a few questions about my PIPEBOMB(S) book cover and it's something I feel confident enough to help other's achieve, I thought I'd do a tutorial on how I achieved that cover.

   FIRST THINGS FIRST, 

   Load up BeFunky.com

 ↠  Go to Designer, and set up your template to an 800 x 1200px canvas. If you don't know how to do that, I've got a tutorial of every little step in my PIPEBOMB(S) book. If you're reading this and are confused, I'll put the link down below in the comments section to help you out.

   I should point out that for that specific cover, I was working with a black background image. PNGS are the easiest thing in the world to work with, so here, I'm going to teach you how to make a background work with your black background image

   Like I've done in the image above, load up all the textured backgrounds you might want to experiment. Keep in mind that with a black background image, dark textured backgrounds might be your best fit.

   Not always, 

but most of the time.

   As you place the image on the canvas (Punk), now make the background black. To do this, just go to the panel on the left. It's the fourth icon down, select the black color and voila.

     Now you have a nice blend between your image, and background.  After this step, go back to all your images and start seeing what textured background you want to pair your image with.

   For example:

   Drag and drop the texture onto the black canvas. Now, I know this looks really funky, but worry not. Let me show you how to make it blend together.

   First, adjust the textured background to fit the whole canvas like this:

   To make the textured background fit, just click on the image and it allows you to stretch it out.

   From here, click on the textured background again and this lovely panel should appear on your left:

   Where it says blend mode, click on that panel and search for the word lighten. Select that and you should get this beautiful end result:

   Your cover is pretty much complete by this point, but if you want the textured background to appear a bit lighter, mess around with the opacity settings. Here's an example of what lowering the opacity can do:

    I hope you notice the difference between the two photos. As you can see, for the image above I lowered the opacity down to 40% as opposed to 100%. Sometimes I like a darker background, sometimes I like a lighter-gray scale image.

   It's up to you.

   As I mentioned earlier, it's easier to use dark images with a black background image. That said, you can make lighter textured backgrounds work. Let me give you an example of that.

   So go back to your basics and just have the image of say (in my case) Punk w/ the black canvas. To do that, just delete the textured background by clicking on that image and literally just hitting the DELETE button.

   You should end up with this again:

   Look around your textures and, say I want to work with something like this:

  Once again, stretch that image out till you like the placement of it. When you've finished placing the textured background as you wish, go to the background color icon (fourth one down the panel) and press on current color. Pick the eye dropper tool and place it over the textured background to get the color like this:

   You should end up with this:

From here, feel free to add all the extra textured backgrounds you wish. Just remember that you'll need to LIGHTEN or DARKEN the image depending on it's coloring.

   For example, say that you want to add yet another textured background, just drop the other background into the canvas. 

  Repeat the steps of stretching it out to your liking, and then hitting LIGHTEN.  

   If you want to add YET ANOTHER element, follow the steps. Say you want to add a textured background with a bit of white. Against a black background like this one, this might happen:

   You see how the white contrasts way too much? Click on the image and with that same panel, LIGHTEN it + lower the opacity until it's much lighter like this:

   From that point, just stretch the image out until you're happy with the placement. Keep in mind that you might need to move the textured backgrounds out a bit so they can all properly fit in the areas you'd like. 

   Once you've done that, 

you're set.

   Click on SAVE, and you'll get the option to save onto your desktop or befunky account which is FREE.

End results:

   Obviously you don't need this many textures, but It's up to you. Personally, I prefer a more clean cover, but I've noticed that it's a trend here to have all these splatters and elements, which I do think are nice, just not my definite style.

   ↠ I hope that this tutorial has helped. If there's anything that all that wasn't clear, please do not hesitate in letting me know. The more constructive criticism I can get, the more I can help you all (which is my ultimate intention). 

   ↠ To end this, I want ya'll to know that finding textured backgrounds is super easy. All you have to do is literally google it and you'll find a lot to work with:

 ↠  I'll make another chapter with specific textured backgrounds I think are super easy to work with.

   ↠ If you found this helpful + liked it, let me know and I'll see what other tutorial I can show you guys.

   Much love,
till then.