The first one looks more realistic than the second one. The fire doesn't really look like a fire, but the lighting of it is pretty good. It may be a little brighter.
On your first, there are eyebrows on your head's face and on the face in your hand. EDIT: Although, that might just be a shadow... I can't tell.
Its supposed to be emphasizing the 'no nose' and the 'no mouth'. Plus, getting rid of the eyebrows made it look weird.
Pretty neat ideas. The resolution is kind of grainy though. I wouldnt have thought of combining multiple image myself. In the first one there are three layers: One of the hand, one of the face, and the background which has both hands down.
I applied a little bit of grain, because the original images were very graing, buy when i smudged, and applied effects, they looked out of place. The first one only has 2 layers, One with hands down, and one with head leaning on hand.
Oh. Well that works too. I was wondering how you got the hand to contour to the face so well...... Yeah thats the problem with duplicating skin, you lose the bumps. No way to really replace them.