Firstly, I use Paint Shop Pro 8. I'm sure that the general technique can be easily transfered to photoshop or whatever.
On a new layer, draw the outline of the blade. (I actually made this one too short, but it's just a quick tutorial effort. sweatdrop )
On another new layer, fill in the centre of the blade.
Next, I set the paintbrush tool to Size 10, Hardness 20%, Opacity 50%. Then, obviously, I coloured in the bottom/middle of the centre with white, giving it that glowy feel. If you wanted to make it more glowy, you could always make a new layer below these two and draw a white shape, just larger than the blade, blur it, then lower the layer opacity.
I then merged the two layers, selected only the blade and used a 1.00 Gaussian Blur. It would work just as well to soften the edge of the centre, making it blend a bit with the edge. Actually, the blur was probably a bit too strong. 0.50 or something would have been better...
I then selected the Eraser Tool, set to Size 10, Hardness 20%, Opacity 100% and softened the 'point' of the blade. Without doing this, it just looks really silly.
Finally, I lowered the opacity of the layer to 70%.
And there you go!
yes, the edit isn't properly finished. I couldn't be bothered sorting out the shoes and such for just an example. xd
I hope this is useful. I've never written a tutorial before! whee
