knitted sock hanger

I have a south facing wall which I hesitate to put pictures up on, in case of fading etc., so I decided to make it a feature for my knitted socks, a wall-mounted washing line if you will. I thought dolly pegs would be excellent for this, so I painted a few of them badboys up:

and later drilled some holes in them. I don't have any more 'process' photos of me making it, so here it is the final product:

framing/shaming

Following on from my previous post about frame-making, I bought a band clamp so I could cheaply and easily make some more frames (glass-less, obviously).

I ended up splitting the corners and re-setting it about three times, trying to get it straight. Also wrecked one of the corners trying to do the job of a rebate plane with a chisel, ha. But I filled it in and it's fine. The whole shitness of the frame correlates with the shabbiness of the painting, yes, that's my statement for that. 

7-inch vinyl box... that I didn't really make.

Been trying to find vinyl storage for a while now, decided to build my own instead, cue the 6mm MDF.
Previously I made a 12-inch vinyl box out of 12mm MDF, glue and nails, but it came out a little... sarah-y, so you won't be seeing it here.
So I came up with a similar design(minus the nails), cut the board, and began glueing:

After several hours of setting/clamping, it promptly fell apart. I brought in my father to do the job properly:

IT STAYED TOGETHER. I tried again with the next piece:

IT FELL APART AGAIN. Feeling like an utter failure at woodwork, I call on my father again:

PERFECT! So the box became his project after that - dads just know how to make shit out of MDF:

And I just painted it:

Nice one, dad!

guitar wrecking/restoral

have an old 'checkmate' acoustic/classical style guitar from around 1969 - a Japanese mass produced effort so nothing special. thought I'd make some attempt at customising it/restoring it/could be ruining it forever, ha.
started this on the 16th February 2013, 3 months ago. here's the original:

see that bit of paper underneath the A string second from right, reckon that's been there since 1970. but without it the string buzzes, so will have to get a new nut. 

6th April 2013: and the sanding begins....

14th April 2013: finally got the fucker apart...

after much chisel knifing and malleting:

and a little bit of repair work:

that's all for now.

kitchen decor

haven't updated in a hell of a long time, lost my studio space for a while(about 3 months). back up and running now though. there will probably be some backblog posts as I rediscover stuff I've been working on over the past few months.
so lately I've been making a few simple frames for a couple of 'proper' paintings I did years ago at uni:

really simple stripwood frames, glued + stapled then glued onto hardboard, painted black and white.

and so I've twee-ed up the kitchen.

changed my blog, again.

I have moved/changed my blog that I mentioned in my previous post, as it iz stealings all meh bandwidthz.  You can now view it on tumblr at theartofsarahjohnston. It will contain proper art stuffs an that; news, drawings and sculptures, yay!

first post over at my website

I have begun a new blog over at my website, www.sarahjohnston.net. It will contain some of my more 'serious' arty concerns; drawings, sculptures and news. Have a wee look an that.

the devil

The devil is in me.

pedalling

New project: I am going to make effects pedals from scratch.
I am interested in how things work, how I can modify them to suit. As soon I got an autoharp, I took it apart and fashioned some new chord bars to go in it, which turned out to be very simple. Although after I did this I found out that it was commonplace to change the chord bars in this way! Still, I learned the mechanics of the instrument and I also made it better for my needs.
Making a pedal from scratch is a little trickier though, and will require some help from my electronically minded father. I am hoping to make something a little like this...

...but with less nuts. I plan to go around a few charity/junk shops to find some interesting objects in which to house all the electronic bits. As for the electronics, I found some circuitry on the interwebs which look a little like this...

 ...which is all jargon to me just now. It will take some time before I have any results to show you, but I may begin by taking apart some old pedals. And seeing as I have never used any pedals before, I will probably buy my 'first' one; this dan electro tremolo pedal which I am assured is quality though it is non expensive:

I will keep you posted...

vested

Been doing some new drawings, so thought I'd snazz up an old vest with one. Wanted to make a high contrast line pattern, white on black. First is my initial drawing, and then the vest, onto which I painted (poorly, haha) with a posca pen dipped in white fabric paint. Most of the fabric paint came off in the wash but it's quite a nice faded grey now, very subtle and lovely. I shall employ the skills of a screenprinter next time.