Make a part of the image bulge

[meetdilip]

This is what I wanted to do. I used a layer mask (black) and selected the sword using the brush. Now I copied the brush out, gave the same selection a black colour in the layer below. Now I made the layer semi-transparent so that the blade now looks thick as if it is up vertically a bit. Thanks.

PS : I looked nice in column background inside GIMP.

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I think blur works much better than transparency in this case.