text tips and tricks

I hate putting text on icons. Hate it hate it hate it. I'll make a perfectly good textless icon, and then, put the text I had in mind for it on over and over and over again, watching it increase in ugliness with each new approach to the problem. I've finally become angry enough with my inability to put text on an icon well that I'd like to petition all you, my fellow icon makers, to help me out a little bit. What are your favorite techniques for choosing a font, placing text, making it legible, deciding if you even want it to be legible, picking a color, a blend mode, etc? Is there anything that absolutely always works for you? I use PSP7, but I've been using it for enough years that I can translate roughly anything from PS if you don't speak PSP. Thank you in advance to everyone.