The stitching is a great detail!

Thank you! I tried adding it to the "gold one" - it looks great in the icon but not the poster, because of the elegant cursive font, it's too much detail.

It's funny how I love to play with effects and go "too far" when making a poster, but then I usually need to pull myself back a bit and ending preferring something simpler.

I guess I'm not unlike the guys in college when I went who loved to play with the effects on the new video editing suite - sometimes (often) to the detriment of story they were making. Shiny new toy! And I'm still very much learning what I can do in ipiccy. So making mistakes and going overboard sometimes is part of that.

I love how extra shiny you made Buffy's hair look with the blend.

I'm super-pleased how that came out! I had to remake the image so the earlier version is the practice shot and I couldn't reproduce that exactly but this is better. I know I had the top image (teacher's pet) set on Lighten and played with the opacity, I may have set the wrecked image on lighten or screen as well but I'm not sure.

And yes, Tara is the lynchpin here, it's her looking that pulls the picture - and the story - together and rouses Buffy for just a moment from her pity-party. (Not to be hard on Buffy, because I love her loads and loads. But I live with depression, have for years, and I know that road. It's so easy to go down. Then again I was never resurrected either, so it's not as if she isn't entitled to her feelings.)