Need Help With Layers

I've always had photoshop, but I never really did anything crazy or anything. But i recently leanred how do the lightning stuff (some pretty hard stuff huh? haha). But i wanna know how to use the gradient tool to make more lightning lines but everytime I do that it goes over my first bolt and totally kills it, I wanna be able to make like a bunch of them goin different directions. And somebody already told be about makin the "electricty" stuff, but thats not what i want. I wanna be able to do them where ever i want them, and i know ill prob. have to use layers, and i really don 't know how so if anyone could help me, that would be great. thx

BTC, I answered your question in a relevant forum in this post: http://forum.teamphotoshop.com/showthread.php?p=169317#post169317 .This area, as the text under the title describes it in the list of forums is dedicated to sharing techniques, not asking questions ;)

Please don't double-post.

chris