For us, we can see where the tutorial is failing and iterate on it. For you, you can ask us and the Design Instruct community for tips and suggestions and get the information you need or feel is lacking in the original tutorial. Win/Win for everyone.

If it wasn’t clear the first time around, drop a comment, send us an email, don’t be shy to ask for help.

And negative comment or not, we’re listening – just that I’m a bit disappointed because our goal is to build a community of designers that are willing to help each other out, but that you didn’t feel like that was the case in this instance, as shown by you hesitating to comment asking for help the first time you experienced trouble.

But to answer your question:
So your handle is a Shape layer, right?

1) Ctrl/Cmd + click on the shape layer’s thumbnail in the Layers Panel. Since it’s a shape layer, there should be two thumbnails, so click on the second thumbnail that has an outline of your handle’s shape. This will put a marquee selection around it (dashed lines that surround your shape).
2) Create a new layer (click on the Create a new layer button towards the bottom of the Layers Panel). Make sure that the active layer is that new layer (it should have a blue highlight over it in the Layers Panel).
3) Nudge your selection (not shape) 4px up. In the Tools Panel, make sure that the active tool is the Marquee Tool and not the Move Tool. Your shape shouldn’t move, only the dashed lines.
4) Now, fill the selection with black (Shift + F5 or Edit > Fill).
5) Nudge up your selection again, not the filled area (make sure again that your active tool is the Marquee Selection tool and not the Move Tool).
6) Hit Delete to remove the excess area.

We’re assuming the people following these tutorials are somewhat familiar with Photoshop. It is difficult to find a balance between giving enough information and also not annoying the intermediate-advanced readers who already know the basics.

So for true beginners, I’m asking you to ask for assistance in the comments. If there are enough people having trouble with a particular step – then we will update the instructions so that future readers won’t encounter the trouble anymore.

Keep up the good work.

Regards.