I chose to use the tutorial titled, "Placing 3D in a Photo".  I first found a nice beach scene to make my background. I used a really bold font and applied a metallic texture to them.  I rotated the letters around until I was happy with their placement.  I set the infinite light in the same place as the sun was in the picture so the shadows would cast the right way.  I pretty much followed the tutorial along in the book, only making minor adjustments along the way.

For this one, I chose the tutorial titled, "Virtual Macro Effects with 3D".  I chose a font called Cosmic Love that I got off of Dafont.com.  I used a paper texture for the background and applied a silver metallic to the textI.  I wanted it to resemble a storybook page. I followed the tutorial pretty closly but I did chose to position my final product a little differently.  I placed the spot light to the left of the text to create a nice cast shadow .