Album Cover: Photoshop experiments

We have started thinking of some ideas for our album cover and I have started experimenting with them on Photoshop. I took the image of a teacup and cut the background, along with erasing some of the image and correcting it. Here is the original image:

I used the 'Lasoo' tool to cut the image from its background, and then used the eraser to delete the shadow. After I had erased the shadow, I found that some of the teacup had also been removed. I used the inkdrop tool and then the paint brush to fill in the parts that had been erased. I layered two different backgrounds onto the image; one black and one white. 

This is the image on a black background. Here you can see that there is still some work to be corrected on the bottom of the teacup, as the colour of this background highlights the imperfections. 

Whereas the white background shows the image as perfect. The shadow has been removed and the corners and edges are smooth.