I then took the lightness even further and really think it worked too. The mats look more scratched and the edges look more worn away. Maybe the text has faded a little but I think it's still very readable.
I originally wasn't going to colour the wreath and roses in but after looking at the mats so far i thought that it could use a bit of colour. I also burnt parts if the background and around the text to make it more readable.
I did exactly the same to my square beer mat but with the words drink which kind of makes an even better, rhyming slogan.
There's not much else i can do to these mat campaigns as the words are supposed to look as natural as possible. Maybe it could be a bit better but i like it and think it would work well as an actual object campaign.
I decided to download a 'scratch kit' font from 'dafont.com' because I just wasn't really feeling my scratches and thought that I needed an easier way of getting the message across. I applied the text, chopped and skewed it up a bit and then altered the opacity, blending it in as much as possible.
I then started to copy some of the scratches into certain places on the mat to create my warning text. I also had to use the stamp tool to remove some of the original scratches as they were getting in the way and my text wasn't very easy to read. I managed to form 'think b4 u eat' (as used in my previous campaign) out of real scratches but it's still quite difficult to read and doesn't really jump out at the audience like the previous campaign did.