I post a couple of pre-finish pics on Hesh's "what inyour shop" thread of my son's electric, and today I did the "faded blue-jean" burst and it turned out so well that I just had to show my buds.
I raised the grain a couple of times before staining because I'm using the water based colors from Stewmac and that keeps the grain from raising so much while staining. I taped off all around the koa bindings and shellaced them to block out any stain then I diluted some black stain to a dark grey in water and wiped it on. After drying, I scuffed it with steel wool a little and repeated the process with the blue stain. After that dried, I used the steel wool to lighten it up in the center creating the burst and letting the grey come thru like an old pair of jeans. Then I taped off all the bindings this time and mixed the same blue into some nitro and shaded around the outside just a bit to re-enforce the burst and a what you see now has one coat of clear over everything.
Thanks for checking it out!
Gorgeous shade of blue and the koa bindings really finish it off to perfection.