Creating Bookish Mood-Boards // ft. my totally amateur attempts (part 1)

Hola!! Welcome back y’all! Hope you’re staying healthy and safe and finding ways to enjoy this quarantine/isolation.

Today, I’ll be sharing with you guys my attempts to make mood-boards.

Yes. Mood-boards. You know, those totally aesthetic and gorgeous boards that follow a certain theme and look so pretty and polished when made by other people? Yes, exactly. Those mood boards.

How did I even come up with the idea of trying to create one? How did it turn out?? What was my thought process that resulted in the below disasters???

Lol. Cause they are kind of disasters.

Continue reading to find out.

First question: How did I even come up with this idea?

Well, I was kind of bored, as we all are during this time, and I wanted to do something artistic. But I didn’t want to paint because I didn’t want to bother getting up and looking for my brushes and paints and then looking for a canvas. And I didn’t want to draw either because I am positively miserable at drawing.

And then I saw this totally beautiful recreation of the Lunar Chronicles’s (? grammar smh) covers by the ever talented and ever wonderful and ever amazing May @ My 1st Chapter which you should totally check out right now because I’m telling you, IT’S AMAZING!!!! I’m still blown away by how amazingly she recreated them (especially Winter!!!).

Anyway. I was so blown away by May’s awesome talent that I had the utterly hilarious, and I mean hilarious, idea that maybe I could be good at digital drawing. Because obviously I’ll be better at that when I absolutely fail at making a simple properly shaded cube.

Yup. You guessed right. I totally failed at digital drawing as well.

But not to worry, because I was soon re-inspired by seeing this really pretty lavender themed vision-board and I went all “awwww” and then I went “why can’t I do that! I can do that!!”

And that’s how you and me are here today looking at my mediocre attempts at being artistic.

I could’ve really consolidated this weird story into like three sentences, but I feel like being extra today 😀

Honestly, it’s kind of hard to find good, free images that accurately represent what you’re trying to show from a book. It’s even harder when it’s a Fantasy book. And I only made one that is based on a mystery because I feel like if I were to make a board for every mystery book that I’ve read, they’ll all probably end up looking exactly the same. Lol.

Because of that, I’ve actually only made 4 boards that are based on books, one general reading board, and one all about sweets. Because I love sweets and I just had to share that one too.

So, I thought of two ways of talking about each mood board.

• One, I’ll share my thought process for each mood board in a loose and fun way and hopefully it’s semi-funny.
• Two, I’ll just talk about each mood board and what each picture stands for in a regular and “formal” way.

I couldn’t decide, so, I’ll let you decide for me! Below are my first two mood-boards (I have 6 in total, so there’ll hopefully be 3 of these posts) with an example of each way that I mentioned above.

Vote in the comments which version you prefer!!

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The Storm Crow by Kalyn Josephson

Thought process:

• Obviously, I need to include a crow. (spends 10 minutes searching searching searching…)
• Why can’t I find a crow that’s flying with wings spread out and all that drama???
• All these crows are so tiny
• Okay, this one looks okay. (insert crow)
• Next up, I need a fire. Because that’s the major thing that basically starts this whole book.
• (searching searching…) why are these fires looking so pretty? (searching searching searching….)
• Okay, that one looks good. (insert fire)
• Now what should I use for the last picture?
• Eggs? (searching…) nope, all these are Canva Pro and I am NOT going to have a watermark ruining my aesthetic. no. thank. you.
• (five minutes later…) Okay, maybe one watermarked image won’t be so bad?
• Ugh, whatever. Okay. Something else.
• (Gets distracted by GoodReads)
• (15 minutes browsing through books)
• Waaiitt, right, my mood board. (halfheartedly searching) I didn’t know making mood boards had to be so stressful (starts giving up)
• Oh wait I’m a genius!!! I can represent Thia’s depression!
• (searches “depression”) hmm. i don’t want to use a face. (more looking. frustration setting in again)
• you know what, I’ll just use this (insert “depression”)
• now for the quotes (searches quotes from book)
• (rereads my mini review because nostalgia)
• (inserts quotes)
• okay, the color is totally off. I can’t have a bright orange fire, a yellow “depression” pic, and then a greyish crow.
• (messes with colors)
• i think i’ll go with a grey scheme
• (more messing with colors)
• ahh, Canva has filters!! (puts “greyscale” filter)
• hmm, that makes the fire look better. now for depression (messes around, puts “street” filter)
• this crow looks great grey, but it needs to be grey-er. (gets a box graphic. fits to image. makes dark grey. increases transparency)
• ahh, wonderful. I’m such a genius. (smiles like I’m Picasso or Raphael or something)

And that’s it for The Storm Crow.

Be sure to let me know your thoughts on the board. And I totally won’t mind if you say that it’s kinda really really bad lol. Constructive criticism is the way to grow as a person and I’m all ears for it!

The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi

Thought Process:

For this one, I wanted to represent each of the characters and also include something that is related to Paris and the Exposition since that was a major part of the story at the beginning as well.

For Laila (L’Enigme), I added the pastries and the ballet shoes. Those are the major “functions” of her character: she dances as L’Enigme, and she runs the pastry side of the hotel.

For Séverin, the floor plan is the best I could come up with, because how exactly do you represent the leader? The floor plan is supposed to represent his planning and cunning as he prepared the heist. Probably not the best option, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

For Zofia, we’ve got the machinery. Since she loves to create things, I included a machine that’s technically in her laboratory. I probably should have also added a chemical reaction or something of the sort since I think she messes with chemicals too.

• The pastries can also kind of represent her since she loves eating them the most after Laila

For Enrique, the books. He’s the big history nerd and the philosopher and all that, so the books are supposed to represent his love for learning and information.

For Hypnos, I couldn’t really come up with anything besides a mansion since he’s super rich. But I couldn’t get a free Canva pic of a mansion, so I choose the center image which is supposed to represent a great hall or something like that. Not really sure actually.

For Tristan, we have the garden. That was his domain in the book, and he was extremely talented with anything plants, so I had to include that. I thought about including Goliath (Tristan’s pet tarantula) but no. No. I don’t like spiders. At all.

And then the first picture is one I got from Wikipedia which is supposed to depict the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. I’m not sure if that’s actually what it looked like, but it’ll have to do.

So I arranged all those images the way I did, and then I got a square shape, fitted it over everything, and I put a green-grey tint to it, and increased the transparency. That way all the bright colors would be muted and it won’t be overpowering over the rest of the duller images.

I chose the green tint since the cover of the book is mostly green. And yeah. That’s it. Of course, I put the text in the center, but that’s it.

Be sure to share your thoughts on this one as well in the comments!

So, I wanted to try something out. Since there is a “poll” feature when you click on Feedback, I was wondering if I could embed a poll inside a post. I didn’t find anything to do that though, but this form looks like it would work as well so we’ll use that for today.

Which do you prefer: my first thought process aka Messy Thought Process, or my second one aka Composed Thought Process?

Vote here or vote in the comments!

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Which do you prefer:(required)

Messy Thought Process

Composed Thought Process

Thoughts

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So, that’s it for this post. It was actually pretty fun to write and I can’t wait to read your votes. So please, do vote!

Do you think my mood-board designing skills are any good? Which of the two did you prefer?

Have you ever designed a mood-board? How did it turn out?

How are you keeping busy and entertained during this highly annoying social distancing? Chat with me in the comments below!