Whoa, sorry for the late reply! I missed this comment somehow. I do use the lasso sometimes, and other times I just use the pencil or brush tool and my tablet. It all depends on how precise I want the shape to be. I'm pretty sure I used the lasso on this page, and I didn't blur the selections at all here. On this page I did take all the highlights selections on the characters and expanded them a bit and feathered the selection, and then filled those as a glow on a separate layer. That "glow" layer was probably set to Hard Light (if I remember correctly).

Glad you like the page!