is their any tutorials for using your own downloaded textures to make good icons and banners? i have a few examples.

i dont understand how to download them (do i download them as pat. if im using PSP8?), i don't understand how to upload them (do I edit path in under textures and click the file their in? I don't understand how to make them look like that (i tried using a default fill in texture and all it did was fill in one little spot.)  how do you make it go through the whole image?)

kthanks so much =)