Mm. Interesting. Filters in Inkscape are, of course, cool.
I did a Google search and found
http://chrisdesign.wordpress.com/filter-effects/. The site has a few examples on the page. Each "download" is an SVG file with the filters already applied. I downloaded the SVG files. When loaded into Inkscape a section can be copied out to a new instance.

If it's text, for example, the text can be selected and the characters replaced with anything you choose.
Interesting. Thanks!