Cover and End Pages

When designing my page layouts I hadn't decided upon a cover design for my book, as I wanted to make some of the pages first to see how they would look before I committed myself to a cover design. I did, however, know that I wanted one image to wrap around and be the front and back cover, so I decided to use one of the scenes from my book.

Once I had designed the "I want to be a Leaf..." "...So I can drift in the wind" pages I really liked the scenery in the background and the colours of the trees. I decided to use this scene and adapt it for my cover by changing the character's position on the front and moving around the background elements. I used two trees that met in the middle of the page, meaning that the image would flow between the front cover and the back. I decided to name the book "What do you want to be today?" 

For my end pages I had always wanted to use a texture or pattern from the book, and I did try using the pattern from my character's clothes. However I found that this pattern did not really match the paint and collage theme of my book when I tried it. Next I thought about just having the leaves falling like they are in the book, only without any of the other scenery.

I liked this idea, as it was simple yet effective, but I felt that it was a bit too simple to gain a child's interest. Also, I didn't like that it was so similar to my front cover. The falling leaves only take up two pages of the book, so I didn't want both the cover and the end pages to use them as this gives the impression that they play a much bigger role in the book than they actually do, so I decided to think of something else.

I liked the flowers I had used on the "I want to be a Flower..." page, and thought that they hadn't had much focus in the book. I tried repeating a whole page of them, and found that they made a really nice pattern. I decided to use this as my end pages instead.