Hi OD Man,
I quickly threw this image together hoping it might be more in line with what your looking for.
I basically followed Corey's tutorial with a few minor changes. I used a brown paper bag as the background and duplicated it twice. I then used levels to lighten one of them slightly to create contrast between the background paper and the tears.
In order to get the texture on the tears, I first highlighted the lightened layer (Layer 1 in photo) and used the lasso tool to draw a selection, I then used command + I to make a copy of that tear which I moved to the top of the layer stack. I did this with all the tears.
When I was done I highlighted all of the tears and duplicated them. I then grouped the originals and merged the copies. I did use Bevel and Emboss layer style on the tears including a drop shadow. The rest was pretty much Like Corey's tutorial. Hope this might have helped.