Manips redux

nemo_88 did something really lovely over at her journal, and I thought I'd try it.  This is the second of hopefully three posts - icons, manips, banners, where I'm going to post my very first graphics and describe why I shudder at them and what I could've done better, if I knew then what I know now (or something like that).

it seemed like people were ok with my icon post... so here goes the next...

( so, starting at the beginning: manips )