EDIT: thank you all so so so much--I think i've got it figured out, more or less. but if you read this and say OMG I KNOW EXACTLY HOW TO DO THIS PERFECTLY, then of course comments are still cool.
This has been driving me crazy for months now, and I'm finally doing the sensible thing and asking for help. I checked in the archives for tutorials on how to achieve this text effect (as in, it being legible) but the closest tutorial I can find is for Photoshop, and even it isn't quite what I'm looking for. I'm using PSP 7.