Ukulele inlay project

[Malibu]

One of my regular customers asked me to do some inlay for 3 ukelele's they are building, so I thought I could do a build log as progress goes on. The inlays are all finished, but here's the progress pictures of the job... (all shown here with permission of the customer)

Here was the brief -
"They will be pretty fancy I think so some inlay is on the cards. Please let me know if you have any ideas in an island/surf/beach theme. Otherwise maybe just something fancy around the soundholes will be nice."

So I started pondering a beach theme and a Hawaiian theme. I came up with waves, surfers, coconut palms and a whole collection of other beachy/Hawaiian ideas, complete with machine code and vectors to suit each one.
Pretty soon I was pulling my hair out, because nothing really jumped out at me until the Mrs suggested a Hula Dancer - and from there it rolled out (reasonably) simple.
Along the way, I had the suggestion that whatever I came up with, the customer would be happy with, so basically, I had free reign to do what I wanted. It's good to have that sort of confidence in my work, but that being said, I still sent a proof of concept through to make sure I was doing what they had as their ideas.

Hula Dancer.jpgHula Girl Concept.jpg

Here's the graphics I went with, and the resultant proof...

The plan was for a mixture of materials - Black pearl for the hair, white pearl for her body and face, some Paua shell for her dress, lei and bangle around here wrists (which were added after the concept drawing), plus some re-con stone as a second lei.
The flower in her hair is yellow coloured white pearl and the engraved details are colour filled to bring out her eyes and lips.

A few pictures of the progress -

[Malibu]

As I had free reign of the design and process, I had a "what if I do this...?" moment and re-designed their logo into a more beachy theme by incorporating it into a wave.
I expected a polite request to "not do that to the logo again", but instead, they were more than happy with my mods, so I ran with it.

Again, slightly changed from the original concept drawing, but basically the same.

Again, a few pictures...

[Malibu]

All done, and I'm pretty happy with it

[Hermit]

Nice work John. The customer would have to be happy with that.

[Malibu]

Nice work John. The customer would have to be happy with that.

Thanks Steve - actually, the customer hasn't seen it yet, just a couple of photo's I've sent and the ones on my Facebook page... but, from those couple of photo's, they were definitely pretty happy with it all - always a good thing.

[woodturner777]

Hi John, I have to say your eye for detail is excellent beautiful workmanship.
Regards Bob

All done, and I'm pretty happy with it

[simso]

As a user of some of johns inlays, his work is exceptional to say the least

[Malibu]

Thanks Bob and Steve,

It's always a good commission when there's a little bit of challenge involved in the work!
As a post-note, the customer was pretty rapt with the final result... but I'm yet to see the finished Uke - can't wait to see it all installed and cleaned up!

My next challenge, that only came in a few days ago, is some work to be sent to Norway. Right at the moment, it's still in the design phase, but hopefully we're nearing the end of the design and I'll get to start cutting