well...... I obviously didn't win the competition BUT I've had a heck of a lot of fun and excitement making my design which has been thoroughly worth it. I'm kinda glad I didn't win now, as I only had a design for the front.... now it's all encompassing. Here she is so far......








Just have to clearcoat and buy all the crap for it. I wasn't gonna get anything else for it until I was sure it come up awesome..... and it did..... even if I say so myself. LOL
(incidentally, the neck pocket still has the tape in there which I won't remove until the clear is done with, so the neck fits in properly of course)

I also put my 3 kids and my wife's names as well as 2010 on the back design because.... well..... I just could. (Britt - Wife.... Jordan, Kaelan and Reece - Kids)

Dude, that's impressive...

Thanks man..... it was a real bastard to produce but fun at the same time, if you know what I mean. My eyes are particularly strained from it's intricacy and I'm glad it's over now..... I WILL NOT BE MAKING ANOTHER!

WOW! That's awesome! Nice job mate.

Took me a while to find the names from the back. Verry impressive!

Im loving it... much better then the winners crap...

Thanks for the nice comments people. Ibanez Freak..... I quite liked the winners design and could understand why it won, but then, we all found out about the wallpaper and it all went tits up. I don't mind though really, I'd still own the winners one with pleasure, it's quite pretty and will probably look even nicer in the flesh... or wood? Besides, If I'd won it, the design would only be on the front and personally I think that would be crappy.

yeah it looks great. your design was my fav out of anyone elses,keep the pics coming as the guitar progreses

Very, very cool. Can't wait to see it in clear!

Will you steal the neck off your 7VWH for this?

awesome job, one of the best designs I've ever seen

I have to say that your design is nice...

However...
With the addition of the names of your wife and children it is spectacular, and meaningful! I am thoroughly impressed (not that I am any standard or anything)!

If I were going to do a custom Jem, I would want it to be very much like yours, in the fact that it's so personal!

Rob..... there'll be plenty more pics. I've taken a veritable crapload of them. This is only a small handful.

Takin a Ride..... I can't wait to clearcoat it either but I'll be waiting a long while before I wetsand this time, as my test blocks that I did are showing some fallback (lines showing up in the perfectly flat glassy surface) which indicates I didn't wait long enough..... and that was like 2 months, though in fairness, I gooped it on very very thick as it was only 1 side and it looked nice at the time. The clear at the very bottom just didn't have a proper chance to cure so with the guitar it'll be the proper allotted time to clear (1 coat every 30mins for between 10 and 15 coats)..... oh..... and there's no way on this green earth that I'll take the neck off my 7VWh. She's the real deal and will remain that way. This is a Jem clone and only deserves a cloned neck. I'm gonna order a custom neck from ET Guitars, the same place I got the body, as it needs to be a light maple fretboard with a black vine (like the original pic). ET Guitars is an awesome company to deal with.... Ernie gave me lots of good advice on making this body up.

Deadtune..... the idea to put my family's names in there only occurred to me as I started to cut out the back. Initially, I was gonna get their handprints on there but there's not enough real estate on there to do that, so then I wasn't gonna even bother. I still wanted to personalise it somewhat though and it occurred to me to just write their names in amongst the calamity as well as the year. Thanks for the nice comments and I agree that, now that it's finished and I can see the finished product, that the idea is even better than I initially thought. A lot of my Facebook friends have commented on what a great idea that was.

Thanks to the rest of you for the nice comments also.

what I'm most happy about though, didn't occur to me until I posted in here.... and that is, once I posted the original hand drawn design and put the actual guitar side by side at the start of this thread, realising just how exact to the original design it looks. I'm very happy about that.

That is freaking awesome.


also i cannot resist.