^ thanks, and award? you must be kidding me. There are loads of other talented artists around on GS. Har koi apni field mai maahir hai. Thanks for the kind words though.
*Orpheus bhai , that 2nd image was used as the background. The "lighter" parts of that image helped me to decide where it was best to place the Allah part and the half pattern design which is on the RIGHT side in the last final image.
It is blurred but the main purpose was to get "shadow highlights" so I could create multiple colored layers on them, and achieve the fading effect in the end.
Look at the last image, and you will see the yellowish glow fading into the light blue color, that is exactly the area which was blurred with shadow highlights.
However I must say this was just an experimental work, I just started off with a photo and turned it into something else. Dont take each and every step so serious, the same result can be achieved in many other ways, but thats just how I did it in this example.
I always like to keep backgrounds original , so in this case the photo gave me the perfect background I wanted, which you asked about.
That is amaaazing you can make something out of nothing!