Toys for tots poster

Idea- for my next project i am going to make a poster.  when i was looking online for and idea i came across a toys for tots poster.  I thought i could redesign it or create a new one.

Specs-8.5x11, in illustrator, and i am going to try to keep it colorful, but not overwhelming.

Research- This is the poster i found.  I am going to use their logo, but maybe add some color to it.  I want to keep it simple, but fun.  As i was looking online a lot of the posters had too much going on or i just did not like how they looked.

I re-made the logo so it would not be pixely or anything.  I had a little trouble with the letters but other than that it was not that bad.

I tried using a tutorial  to make presents but am having trouble following it and can not quite understand the steps so i am going to make my own.

This is the present I made.  I had some trouble with the bow and it still does not look that great, but it looks worse without it.

So I i put everything together and i first started with the poster the long way, but then i realized i had a lot of wasted space.  I rotated it and made the train bigger so it took up the majority of the space.

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I found this tutorial and at first I was having with this gradient thing that needed to be put on overlay.  The first one is when i was not quite getting the gradient right.  I realized i needed to add a shape on the layer the that the gradient was going on.  The second on i got the gradient right but still had a little trouble with the sizing of the brush and the blur effect but i think it came out a lot better then when i stated.