The tutorial I used can be found here: http://art.vinayraikar.com/2007/09/illu ... scape.html

I want to make improvements such as having in shine and having the "P" pop out or something. Any other ideas are welcome, too.

I am very, very new to Inkscape, and pretty new to graphic design altogether. I'm not really that great of an artist in the first place, so I'm still having trouble with seemingly simple shading.

Some example versions are below -




The coins have a "P" because of the website I'm going to put them on, which is not completely put together as of now.

Sweet, thanks. I've been looking around at lots of tutorials, but didn't see this one before.

Convert your P to a path. Duplicate it twice. Offset the two duplicates by roughly the same as you used to get your shadow around the rim of your coin. Select the two duplicates and do path->difference. Now you can apply a different color to create the effect of a recessed or raised P.

Alternate idea:
Use extrude or interpolate to create your raised P. This is a little more involved and I'd suggest looking at some tutorials on these effects before trying it.

Maybe this tutorial can help to add a realistic shading/metallic effect: Inkscape: Embossing Silver / Silver Pendant Tutorial - from the web page:
<quote>
Tutorials - Open Source Graphic Design
Saturday, 25 April 2009 18:18

It's my personal opinion that silver is one of the hardest materials to faithfully render in any vector program. In this tutorial, I'll show you a neat - and fairly easy - technique for creating a basic embossed silver jewelry-style effect.

You won't need the pen tool for this tutorial, but you will need to know how to work with gradients in Inkscape. If you're just starting out, go here to learn about Inkscape's gradient and color applications.

Kendra Schaefer Online
</quote>

That's how I've done it.

I think you should add some details, texture, shadows and highlights. Also make them thicker, it'll bring some weight to them.