I like what you did with the scales.

Thanks! They turned out much better than I had originally planned. :)

How'd you do it?

First, I resized the image so the scales were the appropriate size. I desaturated it so it was in b&w. Then (in Photoshop) at first, I turned it into a pattern and floodfilled it... but the seams of the tiled image were atrocious. So I ended up copying the scales and pasting the image file in and using a soft eraser to dull the edges, then pasting it in again and overlapping it on the first one a little and dulling its edges... over and over again until I covered the whole thing. Though, I realize now that I could have just copied the first one I dulled the edges on and pasted that over and over again. XDD Anyway, the last three steps are to... merge all the texture layers together, then right click on the layer in the layers box and choose 'clipping mask (make sure the textures layer is above the colored layer), then set the layer to 'overlay'! :) It is really easy!

Ah, similar to what I did for the brick texture in this pic http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5946762/ (semi nsfw)

I used a stock brush with gimp and laid out a burned in pattern on a grey layer, then I used another brush to burn in another pattern over top it on the same layer, then with the same brush I used the dodge feature and re-adjusted my pattern and went over it again. Gave it a nice bumpy brick texture. Then I laid out a brick pattern on a new layer, and repeated the process without the base pattern and then I used the emboss feature on the overlaying layer to give it a realistic edge for the cement and merged the two layers.