Help

Just off the boat, I need help on applying two different textures to a 'cardboard cutout'. Essentially I start out with an empty, add an object/pic then overlap a plane and reduce to be just a little bit bigger then the object/pic, add a wire frame and go in edit mode and use the knife to cut the image. Once I pull it out I extrude it a little and go to shading to begin the process of applying the pic to the 'cut-out'. That's when things get a little muddy. I would like to repeat the process to the opposite side of the 'cut-out- using a different object/pic.

I haven't been able to get passed the point of actually adding the texture/pic (but was smaller in size) and the texture looked rather faded. The picture I'm using is 1500 x 1500 pixels and good resolution.

I also would like to add a bump map to the finished texture to accentuate the lighter and or darker areas depending on which effect would be stronger/more noticeable.

Thanks