Here's what I am running into, slightly dumbed down (all parts not involved deleted).
I thought about the boolean intersect, I just haven't experimented with it yet. It looks promising. What I am looking for is an embossing effect which seems to be more elusive. I can get extrusions to work pretty well now, but doing an extrude inward and then trying to boolean it out is stumping me.


This one worked... go figure


Here's what I end up with




My files both before and after projection/trim are attached.

Thanks for taking a look,
Nick