Not sure if it will help or not but I made this for a friend to help him with layers
http://ammeg88.deviantart.com/#/d4lq9gm
Also I advise checking out this:
www.sokogeka.co.uk/Tutorials/Tutorial.zip
Awesome tutorial
Try and use "simple" fonts, ones you can see or make the ones you use bigger, remember the rule of thirds helps a lot in making images flow, other than that just remember to use your shift key when changing the size of an image. (if you are using photoshop you can ctrl + t and then use shift whilst dragging one corner and it'll make it smaller without warping or distorting the image)
Soko has some pretty decent brushes (I think they are attatched to the link above) which you can use to smudge your backgounds etc.
Hope this helps and I didn't rant on.