Fantasy paranormal book cover: the making of a mermaid

I’m excited about my first mermaid cover! It’s a remake for Sheri Swift’s “Legend of Mer”. She had two original covers: I like the shell/marble one better (in terms of style) except you can’t see the others name and you can’t tell what the book is about.

This is a book that should appeal to the vast numbers of paranormal/urban fantasy readers, so it needed a fresh, young cover. The protagonist is a mal-adjusted girl who hides her webbed hands with a goth style and fingerless gloves, not knowing she’s a mermaid, so we found this striking picture.

With that I made this: Adding in a lighthouse and fish skills, and turning the eyes silver.

Sheri likes it, except for the scales (those are easy to remove) and the lip ring (not so easy to fix). I had to duplicate the mouth twice, stretch one layer in one direction and the other in the other direction to overlap the ring. I’m proud that it looks pretty natural. Then I enhanced the colors and added some lacy gloves.