the eye of the beholder and beauty is only skin deep. Cliche’ s which hold true in woodworking. The walnut/maple duo to some is beautiful and to others too harsh. To color the project or leave it natural can boil down to how much of the lumber grain you think is beautiful or blah. Sometimes the grain is drop dead gorgeous but the design of the project calls for color. Enter now the thought of dye rather than stain and you can have your color and still see the beautiful grain without a muddying effect of stain.
http://www.woodworkweb.com/woodwork-top ... -wood.htmlWhen I finished the kinda long video on the page (it was good in showing the dye/stain contrast) some interesting videos popped up at the end of the page, check them out.