Winner's Tutorial, Challenge #109, by yvi

[yvi]

This is way late and I am pressed for time today, but I thought that's better than nothing, and it's a very simple icon anyway.

I use GIMP 2.6. Unfortunately, GIMP doesn't save the history.

As a reference, this was the finished icon:



First of all, I resized the image to 160*120 pixels and aligned it to my needs.


I then adjusted the curves to make it lighter:



I duplicated the layer and desaturated one of the layers.


I put the colored layer on top and added a layer mask, masking everything but the flower in the lower right corner.


Then I picked a swirly brush to add to the upper left corner. I chose a brush from this set: http://project-gimpbc.deviantart.com/art/GIMP-Swirls-II-Brushes-63530119?q=gallery%3AProject-GimpBC%2F6568415&qo=39 . This is based on this Photoshop set: http://redheadstock.deviantart.com/art/Swirls-Flourishes-II-Brushes-58498278 (GIMP 2.6 can just use the Photoshop brushes, but I only found that out later). Here it is in almost full size:



Here it is in added to the icon, resized and in white, added with full opacity and rotated.



And because I thought that wasn't 'visible' enough, I duplicated the brush layer again.



And that was it :) Very simple, as I said. Here is the full layer list:



EDIT: And as I read the posted version I realize I missed the border! There is a 1 pixel white border around the finished icon, too :)