I thought ya'll might enjoy this quick tutorial for The GIMP on how I make the "glow" around my text in Scripture Wallpapers and/or the Scripture tags. It's a simple little trick and it doesn't require many steps to complete.

1) Open GIMP & create a 640×480 image.

2) Set your foreground color (foreground is on top, background color is the one behind it) to #4682b4

3) Then click the "Fill Bucket" icon , then click on your image to change the background color of the image to your foreground color.

4) Create your text layer by clicking on the "A" (text) icon, then clicking on your image to create your text. Type in "A Godly Maiden" and set your font size to 44, and set the font to black (#000000) (you can change the text color below where you change the font).

5) Make sure your text layer is selected (Windows > Dockable Dialogs > Layers OR CTRL+L)

6) With the text layer selected, go to Layer > Transparency > Alpha To Selection.

7) Layer > New Layer (name it Glow), don't bother the width & height, but make sure the Layer Fill Type is set to Transparency.

8) Open the Layers Dialog (CTRL+L OR Step 5) and drag the new "Glow" layer below the original text layer.

9) Now go to Select > Grow. Enter about 4 pixels. (This is how big the glow behind the text is going to be).

10) Fill with White, which should already be your background color, but if not, you can set it. (Step 2) Once white is your background color, press CTRL+.   (in other words. CTRL + Period)

11) Select > None.

12) Now go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur. This is where you customize the blur effect. It helps if the "preview" is on. For this example I'm setting the horizontal and vertical settings to "8.0" without touching the rest of the settings.

13) Click OK. You should now have a blur effect behind your text!  And you can still go back and change the color of the text if you'd like! Below is a picture of my image turned out by using this.