You did much better with the stock than I would have, for the first one. Aside from that, the text doesn't look quite right, for some reason. The colors work nicely together, in my opinon. As for the second one, there's some great use of negative space. The focal fits right in with the effects, but is just the slightest bit hard to see. On an unrelated note, I love the tag you have in your signature at the bottom. The purple one, that is. It looks amazing. Just thought I'd mention that.
Thanks! The text on the first one I did fix, but for some reason I haven't uploaded it yet lol. My bottom signature is also my all time favorite, so thanks again.
Thanks for comments guys, and don't ask why but a signature of my signatures(lol) has been the Mosaic filter... I don't know why but I keep doing an apply image and mosaicing the whole thing and erasing parts for those little square effects... Should I keep doing that or is it just a wasted effect?
I'd say that depends entirely on the tag you're working with. Sometimes it does fit well and sometimes it doesn't figure it out yourself on every tag.