I've always loved a well executed wood inlay. Comes from being around a lot of nice guitars. I've done it a few times with good results, but it makes me appreciate all the more the true artists of the medium. One of my new books is "The Art of Inlay", by Larry Robinson - who did all the wild guitars for Alembic in the 70's. Now he's doing much more incredible stuff. He doesn't restrict himself to the three or four typical shellfish making up a handful of dots. No, he uses the whole guitar from head to toe and paints you a picture using various colored woods, strips of gold, silver, brass, or whatever... jewels of all kinds in appropriate places - most any hard material. The scene changes as you look at it from different angles. He also shows you a guitar that's in the Smithsonian and from other masters of the craft. Wow. Gave me a sudden urge to go slice up some abalone and start sketching some inlay ideas for the acoustic I'm building. Well I mean I haven't touched it in a year, but it's not forgotten.