Thank you so much for your time, recommendations, insights, and careful analysis. You all have been really helpful and I appreciate it. I will try to be even more intentional with my actions in the future and hopefully have better results.

re: Acorn

A couple of P.S. Notes

1. I definitely hear you in regards to working in layers. I'm a self-taught graphic designer so I just never really used layers. Instead, I have primarily used: move to front, back, etc. I agree with your point, though, and know that it would be helpful to use the layer feature more often.

2. I created the Rookie stamp pretty much how you described. It is text, with the white walled shadow, grouped with the shape, then I added a blurred shadow to the background.

Thanks again!