yeah you might have not used brushing but it's just too plain. Try experiment a bit more with the filters and placement of the image to get a better and more interesting bg. Right now it's looks like you duplicated the render a few tiems and just did a blur on it...

I can't realyl say if you've improved cuz the ones you showed me were created using brushes however your new one was created using filters and such.

However your text is better.
Also the sig is a lil' emptry, make the sig size smaller =)

GJ