Photoshop Glass Ball Tutorial

During the course of this Photoshop tutorial we're going through 9 major steps to create a glass ball. The main goal of this tutorial is that you get an idea how to approach this. It's not that important to remember all settings, but it's more important that you understand what's exactly happening.
The tutorial is divided into 5 main areas:

Preparing the background and drawing the basic shape (step 1 and 2)
Filling the shape with gradients and layer styles (step 3 to 6)
Adding a highlight (step 7)
Adding a shadow (step 8)
Adding distortions (step 9)
Note: Photoshop tutorial is spread over two pages. Click on 2 (top or bottom) to go to the second page. Click Here