Here's the promised tutorial on making artificial fire, the tutorial was written for Paint.NET as that is the software that I use but I'm fairly certain this is transportable to Photoshop and possibly even GIMP.
For a life sample, I used the fire as a background to Dante's Inferno
Feedback, questions, comments, post below. If you use it to make something that you upload to dA, I'd appreciate a link as well.