Full Icon Tutorial: Laurel Holloman

Today, we're making this pretty soft girly icon:

I started with a cap of Laurel I took from the Stream Of Consciousness promo, which I cropped and resized.

Since you know I love gradients, I used one here as well, a simple black to white one. Remember, the white part must go over and empty spot of the icon!

I set the layer on screen, and ended up with this:

I thought the white part wasn't big enough, so I duplicated the gradient layer and set this one on Screen, at 88% opacity.

I went to edit, copied merged and put it as a layer on top of the others. I looked at it, and thought that it needed more texture/light effects. So, I grabbed this texture from the great Thia, ex dorky_duck on LJ:

And put it on top of the others. I set it on Screen, 100% opacity and moved it around until I found the spot I was looking for. And which gave me this:

Now, I liked the coloring of it, so I thought, hey! Brush time!

I added a new raster layer on top of the others and I chose a simple but elegant brush from Love Theories on LJ. I fiddled around with the size until I found something suitable for the effect I wanted.

Now, I needed text, and the whole speech on the Stream of Consciousness rocks, so I used Laurel's lines.

You never expect life to throw you so far off plan, that you turn around...

I know, I know, I didn't put a complete quote, but since the promo's speech is just like that, I decided to go for it.

I merged the vector layer (the one with the text) and the raster with thr brush into one layer. The text and the brush were way too dark, so I decided to change the layer opacity and style. I set the layer with the text and brush to Hard Light, 53% opacity. And, voilą!

Feel free to comment and request any other tutorial. Also, duh, don't make exactly the same icon. And, don't snag this icon/tutorial as your own and tell people you made it. Thanks, and if you used this tutorial, feel free to show me what you made with it. Enjoy!