You, too, can do this....

Yes, I do believe that.  And to help you along I am going to give you instructions.  First off- you must have photshop and be able to open it.  You must already be able to open a file in photoshop.  Laugh if you want, but I had to take a class to even do that.  

Start with an image that speaks to you.  I thought this one would give some interesting contrast because of the light on the face.  Open it as a new file.

Then start messing around with those filter options.  I like to pull down the filter gallery.  In my humble opinion filters are the very best part of this program- SOOO FUN!  Now, I'd like to tell you how I made the image look like this.....but I don't remember.  Actually it went something like this....hmmm, yeah...this is ok...but let's try another option....Oh...COOOOL!  Uh, crap!  How'd that happen?  (Yeah, its that kind of tutorial- did you expect anything else from me???)  It may be 'bas relief'.  With that filter you choose a color and it it will alter the look and color of the image.  Or it may be two effects combined.  If you look down to the right while the filter gallery is up on the screen you will see that Photoshop lets you combine filters, you can turn some off or even delete the filters you don't like.  Its really sweet.

I started seeing this altered image as a sleeping maiden and went in that direction.  I wanted to eliminate the sections that screamed modern day.  The sofa, the blanket, the tank top.  So I brought in those butterflies again.  

This is a different butterfly.  I have been having a lot of fun using a site called The Graphics Fairy.  Tons of copy right free or royalty free images- vintage, mostly.   I opened this as a new file and deleted away everything but the butterfly.  This can take some time and there are several ways to do it.  I'd love to use magnetic lasso but its tricky and gets away from me.  To get the large portions out of the way quickly you can use elliptical lasso and hit delete.  I do the large areas and then zoom in and get into the really tight areas.  To clean it up I use the eraser and kinda roll it over the areas.  I know there's better ways...I just don't know what they are.  Yes, this is a stunningly professional and helpful tutorial.  Once its cleaned up I selected it with the selection tool and dragged into the maiden picture.  From there you can turn it in the direction you want by grabbing the corner boxes.  Wait for it....I mean the two headed arrow to show up that's the one that lets you turn vs. changing the size.  

I also went to the edit tab and chose "transform" which lets me distort, skew, warp, add perspective, etc.  This is one you want to use- a lot.  I twisted that butterfly all kinds of up and down and sideways and the image looked great no matter what I did to it! 

But I needed more than one butterfly right?  Well, wish I would have thought of that a little sooner.  Like right after I brought the butterfly into the working file (that's what they call it- the original file- the maiden- good tutorial, right?) because I could have just duplicated the layer. Which I did, anyways, it was just kinda already twisted up but who cares- this is just practice.   So on the bottom right of my screen in the box where all my layers are I clicked on that layer to make sure I was in the right one (ha, Yeah, that's crucial- know which layer you're in) and right clicked to get the duplicate layer option.   From there I twisted and turned it using 'transform' in the Edit menu.

What else did I do?

There was a flower under her face.  I made a new copy of this layer. Selected that flower and deleted everything else but the flower.  Then I copied that layer two more times.  See how there is now three flowers? 

 I also messed around with the properties of the flower layers- one I brightened and one I faded out the opacity so it was not as dominant.  I added a directional source of light but am not sure it helped as my focal point is a little lost and the butterflies dominate a bit too much.  These actions were performed in the layer box- on the right side, down to the bottom.

At the top of the layer box there are drop down menus.  Opacity it to the right and all these really cool effects (not filters- effects- you won't find them in the filter menu) are located in the drop down menu to the left.

Whew.  I'm going back to bed.  Oh, don't forget to save the finished file as a jpeg so you can do your own stunning awesome tutorial someday.  By the way- there are lots of REAL tutorials on YouTube.  Nothing helps like actually seeing what's going on.  The only way to learn this program is to use it- a lot.  I recommend taking a class to start out....you know, so you can even begin to open a file?