i wasn't saving steps as i went, but i was able to recreate the first step of my layer blending to give you an idea of what i did. i simply selected this layer of the source image.....
step 3 of 7
and selected this duplicated flipped layer of the source image.....then i used auto-blend to merge them.....
step 4 of 7
upon merging, i got this. i resized, repositioned, and played around for a while until i autoblended one more time.....
step 5 of 7
and i got this shape, which i proceeded to mask out excess light areas from edges.....then added a photo filter for more color tone
step 6 of 7
added chains i linked together from source, changed hue, placed.....