This Jem7Paw (passion and warfare) project started out as a joke, I mean I had some spare wood left-over’s and I started to draw some of the figures you would find on one of the custom 7-string Universe guitar of Steve Vai.
While I was drawing and sanding the skull, I thought “wouldn’t it be nice to have this guitar ?”, and since I had some wood left and an original Ibanez RG470 neck, I came up with the idea of making a 6-string version of this guitar.
And since I turned it into a 6 string, I wanted to see if I could make is with some of the Jem Signature spec’s on it.
I started out with the drawing parts in all 4 Items that would be placed on the body, starting with the Scull and Pyramid, just to see if I was able to do the drawing and routing at all.

To obtain the 3D look on both the Elf-Angel and the Pyramid I needed to fill out some of the extended parts like the top of the pyramid and the head and hair of the elf-angel.
For this I used wood filler, since I could shape and form this like some clay.

This worked pretty well, and it was very easy to form in any way I wanted it.
To give the elf-angel her hair look, I took a knife and draw some lines into the wood filler, so it would have again that 3D look, and it would stand out a little more.

The pyramid to was easier, just added a lot of filler, and once it was dry I could sand it down in it's own form.
Since this filler worked so well, I also used it to shape the face and boobs of the angel, to give her a more character 3D look.
When everything was in it's good shape, I could attach the remaining parts to the body and sand everything to make them all look as one piece with the body.
From there everything was ready to be painted.

For the neck, I used an original Ibanez Rg470 neck.
This was a neck with pearl dot inlay, but I wanted to try something different.
For this, I drilled out the original inlay, and re-installed some pearl green inlay.
Since the main color in this guitar was green, and I would also use some green Dimarzio pickups, I wanted the green colored inlay on the neck also.

I drilled out the existing inlay, and reinstalled the pearl green dot's that I found on eBay.
To make sure it will stay in, I used the PU glue and I used a coat to clear out all the left-over, and polish the frets and fret board.

When that was done, I could install the tuning heads on this neck.
And mount the neck onto the body.
All the dots are even on the neck and good to go.
And this looks so much better then the pearl white inlay.

To get the right size for the figures I took the Jem template and draw the shape of the guitar body on the pieces of wood that I was planning to use.
Along with a print out of the universe version found on the vai.com website, I started to draw the snake heads, snake body, and the elf-angel.
I never did drawings like this before, but I think these turned out to be pretty good.
Now I had to redraw the skull en eye pyramid on the same type of wood.
For all the figures I think it took me for about one hour to draw them, and now I had some good guidance for where I can go with this.

From here I needed to do something re-shaping of the guitar body, so that the figures would fit the best on it.
And once this was done, I started to cut/route out the figures and sand them down to there shape and form.

Before I could start to paint the body, I had to put some black base color on the body, because once the figures were painted I couldn’t really do the back anymore.
So I started with a high-gloss spray paint in 6 layers and ever each one was dry I sanded the payer again to get the perfect paint cover.
Once it was in the layer I wanted, I covered up the back with some paint-shielding paper, so I won't damage the body anymore when I would paint the figures.

All figures are painted by hand and for this I used the paint set that is also used for painting the table-top game figures like the "War Hammer" game.
For this I needed to give the front it's own base color, or else the paint wound stick to the paint as it was now.
For this I used the 3 layer of "Chaos Black" as the base coat and when this was ready for paint, I started with the overall colors for the guitar, starting from the inside out.....so I could give it a more 3D look and feel starting with blues sky cloud's and bottom fire.

Starting with the dark color, so I could add the highlights with the lighter color for a more detailed look.
I did the same for the figures, but to give them even more of a real 3d look, I used the ink to brush details into them.
And when you look up close the roses.....it really pop's out like real roses.