Trying to make a label but suck at photoshop *sadface*

Alright, I have a copy of photoshop and want to use this picture (cropped down):


and superimpose the lochness monster

onto it for my Irish Red I made (called Edja Monster).

I want to accentuate the reds a bit more on the background picture, blur it and the monster a bit, and scale down the monster so that it is kind of in the dark reflection of the water. I want it to look kind of like a painting.

I havent used photoshop very much so i suck at it and trying to toy around, ive managed to rotate it already to that the horizon is straight and i know how to crop, blur the image and superimpose just the monster onto it, but i cant seem to figure out how to shrink the monster even though i found the transform tool (it only shrinks the highlight of the monster and not the whole damn thing).

Then I want to have a text on the left and right with ingredients and blahblahblah which should be hard as well as 'Edja Monster" in nice font somewhere in the sky (again, shouldnt be hard).

I don't want someone to do this FOR me but if anyone is good at photoshop (im looking at YOU shane_pb, youre work is pretty damn sweet), can you please offer a little guidance so i can figure this thing out for myself?

Much appreciate your help!

*update*
figured it out a bit. any suggestions as to what else i can do to this:

to make it more like a beer label? such as ideas on fonts, or anything special one could recommend?

I'd bring Nessie in a bit, unless you're going for subtle.

Depending on how much you want to play up the nessie thing, you could also add grain via a filter. I'd understand if you don't want that nice background ending up all grainy though.

Update*
I made this one yesterday while at work:

and my buddy made one but the link seems busted. will show when i get home from work.

I like his much better but alas, i am not as good with photoshop. he's coming over tonight and we will undoubtedly finalize the label and it shall be posted and yeay the people will rejoice

I think so far so good, but you might want to move al the info text (beer name, stats) closer together. When this label is on the bottle, you're only going to see 3 inches of it's width at any given time.

And to be a jerk - scripted texts can be a ***** to read, especially at small font sizes. But do whatever you want. It's YOUR beer after all.

thank you for the opinion. that makes sense. i like the idea of putting the info (name, bottle date, oz and abv) to the left and moving the monster more to the right.

and youre not being a jerk with the script. it's a PITA to read when printed out and i have it set to change it to something legible.

i printed the one i made out yesterday and you can't even tell there is a monster on it so that is something that i am going to adjust as well. thanks for the input

Looking good so far. I just recently started home brewing and labeling myself. One tip I could offer that might save you some monies. I been printing my labels on plain paper not label paper and then cutting them down etc. Then to adhere them I been using Milk. I know it sounds crazy but I read it somewhere here and it works great. Not a lot of Milk I just put a tiny bit in a bowl and dip my finger in it then paint the back of the label with a thin layer using my finger. Sticks well holds up in the fridge and cost little to nothing since you most likely already have plain white paper and milk in the fridge.

thanks for the tip. i was debating between using milkglue and gluesticks actually, and will probably try both for this one. i have no issues with using plain paper and the printer i will be using is laserjet and wont run if wet or anything.

Thanks for the link on milkglue. I was just using straight milk no adding vinegar etc to separate the curd DOH! It's been working fine though, might be able to save some steps. Yea probably has to be toner based as the ink would run once damp. I recently started using glossy paper to as it makes the image pop a little more. It works just fine as well. I did notice it curls a hell of a lot more than regular paper once its damp though.

Ok, I think I have a final copy. what do you think? any suggestions?