Toning for Accent

Its been too cold in the shop lately so I haven't done much finishing this month. I received a tile that a relative had made and used some scraps of cherry to make a frame for it. I routed a pair a beads on the edge and sprayed it with a water based red dye. I usually use a water based finish so to protect the dye, I sealed it with Bulls Eye Clear Shellac. Then I noticed that the beads didn't really stand out. It was only when they cast a shadow did they show well.

This gave me an idea to try toning to simulate a shadow. Toning is selectively applying stain over a finish to highlight some feature. Most articles about toning say you need to spray it but for my frame, I just wanted to apply a little dark stain on each side of the bead. I decided to try an artist marker of the shade I wanted. The product I used is called Prismacolor which is a dye in an alcohol solvent. Applying it on the shellac is a bad idea since it is alcohol based too. This time I needed to seal the shellac. Since it was still too cold to spray a water based finish, I sprayed a coat of lacquer which isn't very temperature sensitive. I then used the fine point edge of the marker and drew a line between the two beads and then on each side. I sprayed another coat of lacquer to seal the dye. It was just enough to get the beads to "pop out" in any lighting.