Blue & Green Paisley Strat

OK... I have been working on this one for a few years. It's not that it took me that long. I just have worked on it off and on over that time period.

I'll give a teaser of the end product. Then give some in process shots. I didn't document the whole thing. But, I'll give you what I have.

OK... Here's where we started. It was a Squier of some kind. Originally a metallic cobalt blue color. I think it looked like this.

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I bought the body only used off of ebay.

After some quality time getting to know my heat gun. It ended up like this...





You can see that I had some areas that gouged badly when I was scraping the sealer off. Since I knew I was going to be doing a fabric finish, I wasn't too worried. Given the amount of "stuff" that is on top of this body, not sure I would bother stripping the old finish again.

I have no idea what kind of wood this is. Not matched at all. Each section is a different shade. Somewhat open grained. The two holes for the bridge ended up getting filled with dowels.

Oh... And the body was purchased Jan 4, 2008.

One more note on the body... It's one of the thinner Squier versions.

Here's the fabric. Purchased from Joanne's Fabrics.



I was thinking of something that would be in the range of daphne blue or surf green. When I saw this, I knew it was as close as I was going to get. There really were not a lot of great fabrics. At least, not for a guitar...

Now we are on to decoupaging the fabric onto the body.

As you will see, the body has been sealed/grain-filled (minwax polycrilic) and primed (BINS). I wanted a nice base behind the fabric.

Laid down a nice thick layer of decoupage with a foam brush. Laid down the fabric and squeegeed out the air and excess.





A shot of the texture.


After drying, excess is trimmed with a sharp xacto knife.


When prepping the body, I over sanded this area. I repaired it with plastic wood. But, when I trimmed with the xacto, I cut through the repair and it chipped off.

Looooove the color combo on the fabric! It's so unusual.

Thanks pixmix. That's def what I was going for - inspired by the traditional paisley but my own color combo.

Here's another issue I ran into doing the decoupage.



A glob of the glue dried at the edge. You want to peel/scape these away. Decoupage is gummy and doesn't sand too well. So you don't want any excess if you can avoid it.

Not sure I mentioned this before. I put down 2-3 coats of decoupage over the fabric before trimming.

Then I flipped it over and did the other side as well.



The cutout you see at the rear was used to "frame" the pattern and figure out what parts of the paisley I wanted where. This particular design has shapes that are several inches (4-5) long. So I had to give consideration to orientation and how to accent the curves.

Here we are with the burst. This is after the first try at the burst.



Came out pretty well.

A couple of notes on the burst method. I used a cardboard cutout to do the burst, elevated 1-2 inches above the body. For the forearm, I bent it to match the curve. For the belly cut, I used a separate piece so that I could have the cardboard at an angle parallel to the belly cut. The hardest part to do was the corner where the belly ends. I kept playing with this til I got it right. Also, I sprayed outside in and varied the angle to get a gradual fade.

Before the bursting, I laid down several coats of clear. On this project, I elected to try wb clear. I started with a General Finishes brush on product. I liked this, but could not avoid bubbles. Probably my method. Then I switched back to Minwax Polycrilic spray. This looks slightly blue going on, but dries clear.

The color I used was Krylon Blue Ocean Breeze. This color was just the right mix of daphne blue and surf green. Id say its pretty much right in the middle and was a perfect match for the paisley print. The first can I used was the old formula (acrylic lacquer). Ran out while I was redoing part of the burst and had to go with the new formula (enamel). In spite of this, I didn't have any trouble with comparability. But, I gave plenty of time for off-gassing.

Very nice. How do you blend the edges of the fabric so that there is no hard edge?

After trimming, I dripped some thin CA glue along the edge. Used a spare piece of guitar string to spread it where needed. Then, sanded later to get a smooth edge. Hardest area was the horns, of course. But, now that it's polished up, it is hard to see any irregularity unless you look very closely.

Also, you might notice from the pics above that I didn't strip the sealer from the sides, just the front and back. So, the sides did not need much smoothing. Just the corners.

Also, the fabric really is pretty thin. By the way, you can do the exact same thing with any kind of paper. Several here have done labels (Bud, Jack, etc.). Weren't the original paisleys wallpaper? So, you could print or purchase any design on paper and use the same techniques. Though, you'd have to make sure the inks won't bleed.

Here's another little project I did last year. A small travel amp.



The paper is fairly heavy craft paper. But, with the decoupage, you can get it to lay flat nicely at the corners.

I soo want to paisley my princeton chorus, something dark and subdued, not loud...

nice job on this guitar. I have plans for one too this summer.

I have a love for paisley, floral, wild patterns. This is far and away the coolest looking guitar I've ever seen.

tvvoodoo said:

I have plans for one too this summer.

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JeradP said:

I have a love for paisley, floral, wild patterns.

Click to expand...

Ditto. Looking good. Thanks for the details and all the pics.

Nice job!

tvvoodoo said:

I soo want to paisley my princeton chorus, something dark and subdued, not loud...

nice job on this guitar. I have plans for one too this summer.

Click to expand...

Not sure of this qualifies, but lots of paisley can be found on the internet as well.

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All,

Thanks for the comments and compliments. Means a lot.

OK... a bit on the neck. I ordered it from ebay. It's an Eden neck. Overall seemed really nice considering the price I paid. Frets were better than the saga kit I did previously.

After giving it a light sanding, I added just a bit of color with RIT dye dissolved in lacquer thinner.





If you can see, it has just a slight yellow shading.

I tried to use my dremel drill press to drill the holes.


Unfortunately, this did not yield a very good hole. I had to plug the hole and redrill. I got much better results with my hand drill.


I also had to shorten the neck screws because of the thinner body. Used a dremmel cut-off wheel and then sanded the point a bit.

I initially sprayed the neck with Watco nitro. But, I ended up stripping it off. Here's why:



Orange Peel!!! Also, the lacquer chipped on the edge of the FB when I was trying to roll the edges. Apparently, Watco is a bit more likely to chip than some other varieties. Rather than attempt a repair, I opted to strip the entire neck and finish with tru oil. Then I sprayed just the headstock with Minwax nitro.

Redone fb:

Beautiful paisley!

Nice work. I really like the way the colors compliment each other.

Good information on blending-in the edges.

I've done a couple with wallpaper. Now I will definately have to try a fabric one.

udimet720 said:

I initially sprayed the neck with Watco nitro. But, I ended up stripping it off. Here's why:

Orange Peel!!! Also, the lacquer chipped on the edge of the FB when I was trying to roll the edges. Apparently, Watco is a bit more likely to chip than some other varieties. Rather than attempt a repair, I opted to strip the entire neck and finish with tru oil. Then I sprayed just the headstock with Minwax nitro.

Redone fb:

Click to expand...

If your lacquer is chipping, Id say there was something going on with the prep and sealer.