Black Earth: Dark Masquerade Cover Design Elements

This last weekend, my wife and I went to Michael's craft store and picked up the items we're going to need to create the main focus of the cover design for Black Earth: Dark Masquerade: the Legion mask.

Without giving too much away, I can say that in the story, the main character comes across a mask crafted by Legion - an alien entity bent on destroying all of creation. This mask - one of hundreds, possibly thousands - contains a human soul within.

Crafting the mask is a decent, but doable challenge, because in the book it is described as being made of the same material that forms Legion's vessels - shimmering, black rock.

So first, we needed a mask -

Then we purchased black sand - shimmering sand, no less - which we'll glue onto the surface of the mask -

In the book, the mask(s) are decorated in jewels and feathers, so we purchased a bit of both. This time we went with a purple theme (with a little bit of white), since the color scheme of Book 1's cover was blue, and Book 2's was orange -

And now, I just step back and let my wife work her crafting magic. Once she's finished putting the mask together, we'll start the photography process. For those who are curious, all of these materials, including a couple brushes to apply the glue with, cost less than $20 - and that was without coupons.