Distressed or Cracked Effect on Vector Shapes

[gnurf]

Here's how I did it:

1. Type text in a bold font.
2. Import the Pine needles from the Fill gallery
3. Apply black as dark contone color
4. Change the contrast by adjusting the fill profile (forgot the screenshot)
5. make a bitmap copy
6. Trace the copy with shown settings
7. Remove background of the trace and then join shapes
8. place a couple of copies of the trace above the text and subtract shapes

Also, what I did:

1. Apply a slight Inline contour with round joins
2. apply Inset Path
3. subtract a slightly enlarged copy of the scratchy trace
4. apply an Outline countour with same size as the Inline contour
5. Apply Inset path
6. subtract the rest of the scratchy traces.