French Barn Bike
When my parents retired to France over ten years ago, they moved into a house previously owned my my great aunt and buried away in the barn was this old bike which my mother remembers her aunt riding in the 50's/60's.
Under the muddy dust it was rusted and neglected but amazingly still ride-able, the chain hadn't seized and mechanically it still held together in a charming way.
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It took me a good few years to get round to some light restoration but it now has new tyres, brakes and cables plus has been chemically treated to prevent further rusting. I. With the lovely patina showing and a converted front lamp using LEDs this bike is ready for use again but will be kept for special occasions.
The Cherry Uke
When my girlfriend mentioned that she'd love to one day have her own cherry red Fender Stratocaster, I knew I would wind up with some related gift. Shortly after it occurred to me that I might be able to find a Ukulele equivalent as an upgrade to the one she already has.
After doing my normal online trawls, I found a Stratocaster shaped electric Uke but it was not available in red. No problem me thinks, I can to a respray.
Long story short, I spent the next six weeks secretly preparing this little beauty in the evenings with a resulting layer of red paint dust coating my tatty old conservatory and even spread into the kitchen.
The finishing touch to my modifications was adding the white scratch plate. This took quite a bit of planning, transferring the right shape to the plastic and then cutting out neatly enough to produce the desired effect.
I'm very happy with how it came out and Dani was chuffed to get this as an xmas present.
The Piano Table
This project was entirely my gilfriends idea and execution but was such a labour of love that I wanted to show it off here. I'm so impressed with what she has achieved having not done much woodworking previously and jumping into making something this precise out of old hardwood flooring.
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The material came from the Brighton Wood Store who have al kinds of reclaimed timber and some beautiful hand made furniture. The floorboards themselves were scuffed and scratched and coated in old varnish so we had a lot of prep work to do before even thinking about making the first cut.
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The end result is a large but funtional piece of furniture that houses Dani's electric piano and unintentionally doubles as the perfect height table on which to use a sewing machine.
House of Serenity
When I repainted the house we needed a new house number and my girlfriend wanted to try painting on a new material so took on the challenging task of using sheet aluminium.
She spent ages building up layers of acrylic paint to reproduce the Serenity logo from one of our favourite TV shows 'Firefly'. Once protected with numerous coats of lacquer it went up on the wall and has survived it first British winter very well and is still as vibrant as when it was first painted.
RB Returns
A good friend of mine had this character he used to play at university on nights out and for some organised events they ran for a group of friends. When he resurrected the character for an Interactive DVD game, I had to be involved.. in front of the camera this time.
Another friend of ours who works in media circles got the footage professionally edited and composed the score. The results are something we all see as a high watermark for our productions, despite being for a drinking game!
Jiggedy-Jig
A bit of a jokey e-card, I created this little flash cartoon for my friend Ashleigh for her birthday which so happens to coincide with xmas day.
