How to get this effect?

Hey community, I have another question.. well, 2 actually

I was wondering how to achieve the effects in these 2 icons?

by akaru_icons and
by allsundays

I'm not worried about the brushes or text or anything, but how to get the actual image to look like that. I'm using Photoshop CS.

I'm gonna work on making my first tutorial to post here as a small thanks to this community soon Xp

Thanks for any help ^_^