Attempting some designing myself

I have been following the Designer Darling Competition going on right now at Stuff to Scrap. I'm nowhere near the place where I can be doing something like that, but I am having fun watching the women go through the challenges and seeing the comments and questions that are coming out. One of the comment posts after last week's round was that they all needed to be putting more texture into their papers, and there was a neat thread on some ways to do that. I haven't yet taken the time to make any of my own texture overlays, but I do have a few CU textures that I bought so far and I thought I would try them out. There were some great instructions on www.scrappersguide.com on how to make a plaid paper from your photo, and so I combined both technique articles and gave it a try. Here is my result. I love the way it came out and can't wait to try it with other photos.

This was my photo I started with:



and this is the paper I came up with:


Pretty cool, eh?