Masking and Polaroid Brushes

I've been wanting to try masking brushes in my icon making and I just can't seem to find anything on how I would go about using them in Photoshop. I saw one tutorial on them while searching through a list of tutorials but it happened to be for Paint Shop Pro and it didn't work very well for me when I tried it out in Photoshop. So can anyone point me in the direction of a tutorial on using masking brushes in Photoshop or give me tips on how they're used? I definately took a good look at the memories first and only saw a tutorial on masking layers not brushes.

Also, while I'm picking your brains is there a tutorial out there that shows how use Polaroid style brushes? I have a few that were a part of a nice mixed set of brushes and I'd love to try and use them.