Existence and uniqueness of large, boundary blow-up solutions are obtained for the quasilinear elliptic problem −Δpu = λf(u) in Ω, u = ∞ on ∂Ω via good boundary layer estimates for large λ, where Δp is the p-Laplacian (1 < p < ∞) and Ω ⊂ R N (N ≥ 2) is a bounded smooth domain. The nonlinear term f satisfies f(0) = f(z1) = f(z2) = 0 with 0 < z1 < z2, with z2 a zero of f of order k. It is shown that, if k ≥ p −1, the unique large solution ūλ is a boundary-layer solution which satisfies ūλ > z2 in Ω; if 0 < k < p −1, the unique large solution ūλ is a boundary-layer solution, but a flat core of ūλ occurs. Furthermore, for sufficiently large λ a small positive boundary blow-up solution is obtained and its asymptotic behaviour as λ → ∞ is discussed.