I'm a tutorial virgin...so here it goes

from this to this



So I started out with this cap of Sarah Lancaster


Crop, resize or whatever you do to create a base.

Duplicate your base and set the duplicated layer to screen.
I got this:


Flatten the image and duplicate it.
De-saturate the duplicated image and set it to soft-light.
I got this:


Flatten your image again.
Now here's the "hard" part

Duplicate the image again and de-saturate the duplicated layer. Get your eraser tools handy - probably 4-5 pixels at 100% (I would zoom in to about 400% to make sure you don't make any mistakes) and erase (on the de-saturated layer) only her shirt and her hair to bring out the color underneath. (I also erased her nail-polish just to add a little more color but it depends on your image)
This is what I got:


I thought her skin was a little too black and white so I duplicated the background layer, set it to overlay at 30% and set it over everything.
This is better:


Now for the gradients! (I know you're all super excited)

I only used 2
this one:


and this one:


I'm sorry I don't remember who made them...but they're both from the same place...if you know please tell me and I'll give the credit where it's due.

Set the gray one over everything - color dodge 30%
Then the green one on top of that - soft-light 20%

I got this:


Now we're pretty much done with the image part of the icon...onto the brushes!
New Layer
I used this brush (courtesy of my_wonderful)
I lined 6 up on the right side of my icon and filled them with white.
then set the layer to overlay at 100% (but it depends on your image so play around to see what works)
this is what I came up with:


now you can stop here if you like but I added some text


and there you go! Hope it helped.

Please no hot-linking
and comment if you use

also I'd love to see what you made and hear feedback!
enjoy!