Hi Azurecrusader.
Sorry to hear you're stuck. (But this will help me refine the tutorials for others)
can you say which tutorial and step you are at? Is it colouring the map? at step 1.6 - 1.8??
From what you mention, it sounds to me like you have a duplicate of your sketchy colours. you blur the copy, but the original is still visible underneath, and that would appear as if nothing is happening. make sure that layer is hidden - or delete it if you don't need to edit it.
here are some things to try...
a) Do you have any duplicate layers of the colours you want to blur visible?
You can see in the screen grab on the tutorial I have an an original layer (named sketchy terrain) and a copy (that I named Blurred terrain ), but I turned off the visibility of the sketchy terrain (I kept it only as a back up, it's not really needed) I left the green land one alone so I could change it's hue, colour or saturation if I wanted to - though I didn't, so it's not essential. Having the the blurred terrain colours on a different layer means you can play around with it's opacity to your liking.
(The green land can be any colour, and can be a variety of blurred colours too there is no hard rule.)
b) Have you used your Alpha channel to select the land to blur only that? Alternatively, you can create a new layer not yet worry abour selecting anything, paint over it , blur it, then use your alpha channel to select the water and delete any blurred bits over the water.
c) There is always multiple ways of doing stuff - you could merge everything to do with the land onto a new layer and blur it in one go...
- click on the top layer
- select all (Ctrl+A )
- merge visible layers (ctrl+shift+c then Ctrl+v )
- with this new layer active, select the land using your alpha channel
- Filter > Guassian Blur
- use your alpha channel to delete any blurring on the water area if needed (invert selection)
let me know how you get on. if you're still stuck, you could send me the file, so you could crop your work down to a square to show a problem area no bigger than 500x500 pixel (for file size). I only need to see how your layers are placed, not your whole map, so it can be emailed.
good luck
Jez