I have spent hours playing with Adobe Photoshop Elements, discovering blend modes and the such.
I prefer just cropping and adding text. These were all too much like hard work and I'm not entirely sure they were worth it.

I couldn't get the text to do what I wanted, so I settled for this.

This one actually turned out how I wanted it to.

I just cropped this, yes? No... there were several layers worth here. It's terrifying.

Once again my text was being a bitch. This also comprised of several layers.

This is another one which turned out how I wanted it. I feel like squeeing.

Layer upon layer upon layer... I'm sure there's a simpler way to get that effect too.

*snerk*

Hmm.

The lower sword looked so great larger, it was all stained glass.

After all that hard work that's what I felt like.
Before I was just relatively perplexed as to why people spend ages and ages making these kinds of icons. Now I'm completely flummoxed. Sure I've spent a while making a "Loz" icon, but nowhere near as much time as each of these took. MEH!
:D