Tutorial #1

Today we will going from this >>>

to this

I started with this image - (the original is here)

and then i cropped it down to 100x100 and got this

I used the unsharp mask with the amount set at 40 and the radius and threshhold set at 2. Then I duplicated the base layer and set it to soft light and got this

It looked a little too washed out for my liking, so i added two gradients on top, (both by crumblingwalls)</span>

 i added this one first on blending soft light, opacity 100

 then this one on blending colour burn, opacity 100

and i got this>>>

which i liked, but thought was a little boring, so i resized it to 90x90 and pasted it onto a new 100x100 image (but don't get rid of the 100x100 image...you will need it later) and got this :

i didn't like the placement much so, selected the 90x90 image and right clicked, the clicked free transform, the played around with the image till i got this >>>

which i thought was kinda cool, cos i'm weird like that :p, and then i added two light textures -

 i set to lighten 100% opacity

and this i set to soft light opacity 100 

(EDIT both the above light textures came from colorfilter)

After adding those textures i got this >>

then i added masking tape brushes (colour #D4C486 whic i picked from the image) made by teh_indy (the set can be found here)</span>

next i went back to my original 100x100 crop and i selected a 15 x 100 section then desturated it and got this

i pasted it onto the other image and positioned it to the left, the got an eraser and lowered the opacity and flow to 30% then erased the parts which were covering the tape borders >>>

i added a stitches brysh by lovemelikemusic </span>

i added a black border made by bessyboo

i then added some text in rockwell size 1.5 underneath and voila!

i'd love feedback and to see what people do with this!