ebonizing maple with a white spot

I googled ebonizing maple, and naturally 3 of the top 5 answers were from SMC. Read thru them, lots of good advice. And I'll be testing several of them to see what I like. Here's the question: I want to leave a splotch of natural maple in the middle. We had a black Lab who died recently and I want to make a cremains box for her. Not sure what it's going to look like yet, but Pearl had a white spot on her chest, and I would like to bring that reference, or hint, into the front of the box.

So with all the methods out there (india ink, ink jet printer ink, leather dye, RIT dye, Feiblings, GNR, etc) how would you create an unstained, random, splotch on the maple. (or are there suggestions for other wood to use??) I've thought about dripping candle wax, taking a pipette of sealer and dropping it on, using a pipette to drop the ink/stain around the splotch, using hot melt glue in a random pattern, etc. I plan on doing some experiments, but was curious what suggestions y'all might have. TIA.

You might put a blotch of wax on the "spot" before you ebonize.

Mike

thats one of things I'm gonna try. And hot melt splattered. And sealer. and anything else I can think of.

Plane the surface with a hand plane so you've got a (barely) proud area in the center, then stain, and then hit it the surface with a long soled hand plane. I'd try a practice board or two before using your best wood, but you should be able to get a nicely feathered spot of maple. The ebonizing stain won't be much more than a 1/64" deep.

My go-to on this would be shellac. Your sealer may also work. You'll have to play around a bit to see what resists your ebonizing method the best.

A thin cut applied with a bit of paper towel could create a vague shape. A thicker and thicker application could be applied "bulls eye" style to get a sort of sunburst effect.

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Bill, since your experimenting, you might try ebonizing the whole surface and then bleaching the spot in.