Wow, I think this was my quickest manipulation ever (about 3,5 hours). But also one of my best, so far. I tried out masks for the first time and I must say they're absolutely brilliant!! I mean, including the copyright note, there are only 5 layers! My usual pictures tend to have about 10...I like the reflection of the eyelashes on the pupil!

Since I had no idea what to call the picture I searched for quotes and sayings about magic...and stumbled upon the following:
Magic lives in curves, not angles. ~Mason Cooley
Seems to be true here, doesn't it?

Credits and a big thank you go to
for the cool glass ball! [link]
for the eye [link]
for the monastery background[link]
and
for her walkthrough on [link] because this was what made me try masks!

I like how the lashes reflect on the pupil!
The glass part looks a lot nicer in fullview


edit:
Since a friend told me the reflection was nice but completely unrealistic (which I was fully aware of but my laptop gimp has fewer functionality than my desktop computer), I changed the background part of the ball. To be able to tell what the result should look like, we did a little povray exercise, pretending to study Computer Graphics (well, it was pretty useful, I admit). So this is what the reflection looks like with Fresnel reflection! This took me another one and a half hours or so.
I even made a comparison picture! [link]


Cheers,

Q-Rai