cross posted to 
icon_tutorial
Hello lovelies! I bring you another tutorial! It's quite simple, but i really liked it so i thought i'd share it with you!
Today i'm going to show you how to go from 
to 
in a few easy steps! (wow, i totally sound like a craft show person...*nerd*)
I used this picture, which i found on emmyrossum.net: 
(Aww, she's so pretty!) and cropped it to 100x100:
Next, i duplicated the layer and sharpened it: 
Note: sometimes when you sharpen an image it becomes to sharp and ends up looking fake...example: 
so just lower the opacity until it looks nice!
Then I merged the two layers to make them easier to manage.
Next, I took a nice little area of the background and cropped it to 100x100: 
it's a bit blurry, but that doesn't matter, you won't notice in the end. I dragged this layer over the background layer, then set it to soft light and got this: 
this lightens up her face a bit and adds a nice, soft element.
Finally i added the text. I wrote "E M M Y" in ITC Garamond bold, 24 pt in #607554 which i got from the green design next to her face and set it to linear dodge, and voila! You're finished!
Final product: