Made with Adobe Photoshop CS3. Not translatable.
Level: Medium. Uses selective coloring.

serenity2bliss requested a tutorial for using a texture as a background, so I whipped up this icon as an example.

As always, tutorials are just guides. The values I use may not work for the image you've selected.

1. Crop and resize your image. I took this image from Ashley Leggat Fan and cropped/resized it to 100x100 px.



2. Duplicate your base and set it to screen. Depending on the brightness of your cap, you may need to make more than one screen layer, or you might not need one at all. I set this to opacity 50.



3. Select your top screen layer and go to Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen. You may need to reduce the sharpen (Edit > Fade Sharpen).

4. Layer > new adjustment layer > hue/saturation. Set master saturation to +20.



5. Layer > new adjustment layer > selective color

REDS
Cyan: -50
Magenta: -10
Yellow: 20
Black: -10

YELLOWS
Cyan: -60
Yellow: -20
Black: -10

WHITES
Cyan: 50
Magenta: -30
Yellow: 20

NEUTRALS
Cyan: 10
Magenta: 4
Yellow: 5
Black: -4



6. Layer > new adjustment layer > selective color

REDS
Cyan: -20

YELLOWS
Cyan: -40

NEUTRALS
Cyan: 10



7. Layer > new adjustment layer > selective color

REDS
Cyan: -22
Magenta: 11
Black 10

YELLOWS
Cyan: -20
Black: -11

CYANS
Cyan: 30
Black: 10

BLUES
Cyan: 30



8. Layer > new fill layer > #020517. Set to exclusion 100.



9. Duplicate base and drag to top. Set to soft light 50.



10. Merge all (SHIFT+CTRL+E).

11. Select the texture you'd like to use as your background. Mine was made by ohfreckle.



I also added a soft light layer and a saturation layer to spruce it up a bit.

12. Paste your completed icon from STEP 10 as a new layer on your texture. Move it around if you like. I put Ashley in the center.

13. Add a layer mask to the top layer.



14. Using a round brush, "paint" the layer mask black over the part you wish to erase. I erased everything but Ashley.

If you screw up, don't worry! Just "paint" using white, and it will replace everything.

15. After I erased pretty much everything except her, I changed the opacity of the brush I was using to 30% and went over the edges.



16. Merge all layers again.



And you're done! Let me know what you think. :)