Making a Tattoo from a clothing template

Hi All:
Well, I was asked by a friend to make a tattoo that looks like a carving on a person's chest. I know that I will use a shirt template for it, but what I need to know, is this: I've made clothing before, I know all about transparencies, etc. I used GIMP, but when I create the layers, should I just have the background, transparency layer, and a text layer, then just upload the trans and text layers? I'm completely confused by this, since I'm not using a pattern to make a new shirt, just a tattoo.

Help!

Not sure how to explain this... do it as if it was a pattern on a shirt, like text (or image) on the front of a shirt, but just don't add the main fabric of the shirt in, essentially. If you just do the tattoo on a blank template (Open up a template, and use a completely blank layer if you can, with a 50% opacity of the template above/below it or something, so you can see what you''re doing. Not sure what GIMP is like, I use PS), and then use the selection of the tattoo only, and invert it to make the alpha, it should be pretty easy,

I'm hoping this made sense.

Thanks, it did make sense! I'll try it!