Faking the tilt-shift

I've been using Aperture 2 to edit the majority of my photographs, but I really felt that it was pretty limited in the varieties of edits that you can do. I don't have Photoshop, so I decided to try out GIMP. GIMP is an editing program very similar to Photoshop, but best of all...its FREE. I've really been into the Schempflug effect that tilt-shift lenses create, so I started researching online, and I found a really helpful tutorial on how to achieve this same effect through GIMP. Bart Busschots wrote an amazing tutorial, so check it out if you're interested in learning how to fake the tilt-shift. Anyways, here are my first attempts: