Four steps to design your own book cover.

When you are writing stories and have a limited budget, or no real budget the last thing you need is to be having to pay a cover artist if it's something you can manage yourself with your own photographs and a simple photograph editing program.

The photograph above is from a family day out some years ago and I just cropped the image to get the part of the image I wanted to work with.

In my story there is a sort of magic gateway that can transport you to other realms so this will become my gateway. Using a focal black and white tool in the program ( I use Picassa which was free, not sure if it's still around now.) I then darkened the outside of the pictire.

Just about all of these basic editing programs have text options and you can add script styles from free to use sites around the internet. Adding the text is easy to do, it's best to keep to a style that is easy to read as you only have an instant when someone first sees the cover to make an impression.

This is just an idea for the cover that I knocked up in about 20 minutes, the more you practice at making your own covers the easier it becomes. Spending a couple of days leaning what effects a program can make and just playing around can lead to you never having to fork out for a cover, using your own photographs will save on having to pay for images too.
If you are creative enough to write a book or story you have the ability to create a cover image.
Added to that it's fun to play around and when you see your book you know not only did you write the story but you designed the cover that is the first thing people see.