Book du jour - "embossing"

By doing lots of variations of "words on black bookcloth" I'm getting up the courage to make the big leap to putting the titles on the actual covers of the books. Also, I'm still trying to figure out what would be the best way to do it.

This morning, two more possibilities - at the top in the photo, the letters were cut part-way out of the board. The unwanted bits were easier to peel out than I imagined. More work is needed on the configuration of the words - the E should have more space round it, and the D is too wide - something to fix next time.

Once the cloth is glued on, you have to feel around to find the sunken bits, and define them (carefully!) with the tip of the bone folder. The rubbing makes the book cloth shiny - even through a layer of protective paper. So I decided to go for the shiny look.   Heather Weston calls this technique of making a sunken impression debossing (embossing is making a raised impression).

At the bottom of the photo, two layers of board, the top with a window, into which I'll insert a bit of metal with "punched" metal (from a drinks can?). Yes, that is a gluey mess on the cloth - undesirable, but it does give me a chance to find out if it can be sponged off. The recommendation is to "wet the entire cover" to get a uniform effect when the cloth dries again. I've used a glue/paste mixture which is supposed to be "water reversible".