Who will open that door... Plain black B/G because I suck at smudging and I had no ideas. Feel free to use it if you like, but remember to give some credit where it's due. CnC is welcome and appreciated. It may suck but I think the stock was difficult to work with already, and it's not like I put 100% of my possible effort into this...
What I used to do when I was stumped in GIMP is spam the flame filter or whatever it's called. It can end up looking great in these dark tags. Also, experiment with textures. They help a lot. And always experiment with smudging where you feel it would fit! GIMP isn't the best program for it but it can work well and you should learn it anyway. It's a very powerful technique.
Here's the thing. I had been experimenting with smudging on two layers of solid colors. It looked bad and I decided to scrap it. After that I didn't know what I could do with smudging so I took it out all together.
I think you did a pretty good job on the smudging, but the stock looks a bit blurry, unless that was your intention. Is the text supposed to be the focal? if so, then good job. As for the plain black BG thing, I say use a simple gradient. 2 colours, one being white. It will add more depth to your tag rather than just a plain black bg. Good work though! you are improving!
It wasn't supposed to be as blurry as it turned out but by the time it ended up that way the only way to fix it was redoing the whole layer, and I had already done the smudging that I loved (the "stars"). I couldn't afford to lose that awesome smudging. D:
