One day, I'll look back on all this and laugh...

That's the hope anyway.  Some point in the future I want to be something.  Something better than what there is now... and to do that, I'm entering as many competitions and practising as much as I possibly can!

It's still not anywhere near as much as I want to, but as long as I get a few hours a week and create a couple of designs then I'm happy.

Recently having acquired some new plug-ins for Photoshop, it's a struggle creating anything when the mystery of new buttons and filters must be explored.  Not to mention brushes... I'm not sure I'll ever get my head round it all.

To start off, my current Photoshop projects are as follows:

• Design tickets for Motocross Presentation Dinner
  
• Enter MiniSpace competition
  
• Set up portfolio website (also learn CSS... ah..)
  
• Enter the September PSC forum challenge (theme: Movies)
  

Motocross tickets is going quite well, leaving it to my usual last minute before needing a first draft I put together 7 designs with slightly different elements, all based around the clipart I'd been given.  Colours and tweaks will be done when I get more back from Penny and the motocross organisers.

MiniSpace... now this is where things are looking up.  Having spotted a design competition on this as an advert on Facebook a while ago I spent a long while kicking myself when I remembered to go back to look, and found I'd missed the deadline by one day. ONE day! ARGHH!!!  Then weeks later I saw the advert again, and this time there was a new competion - design a background wallpaper for their website.  It's a nice site, looks like it will continue competitions for designers.  You can preview entries and if you're registered, vote for them.   The top 3 win prizes.  I very much doubt I'll even get in the top 100 - but that's why I need lots of practise like this.  My profile is here.  I've started trying to get ideas but it's going to be a long process...