Post #558740 by tikihank on Sat, Oct 9, 2010 1:36 AM

Hey everybody i'm a college student here in So Cal studying auto technology at a local vocational school
i LOVE all this retro-phile tiki-ness thats all over this site

problem is student=majorly broke
so i drool over everyones mug collections and am ridiculously envious of everyone with a home tiki bar

but now the point of this post, in my search for tiki that i can afford/actually have room for i have to decided to combine my skill set and my tiki-lovin'. i decided to tiki-fy my 1989 Bronco

to this end i have started finding little additions for the interior
i found a coconut monkey at one of the local Goodwills:

and a kukui nut lei at a antique store:

but most excitingly at that same antique store i found a tiny glass float and pufferfish:

these are both probably about 3" diameter

so my plan is to make tiny lamp combo out of the fish and float for the interior of the bronco
i was stuck though, i had no idea how to light those suckers
a wander through target inspired me when i found these:

a tiny string of lights that are battery powered!
now i just had to hack up the light string to shorten it and to get the light spacing to where i liked it
well after about a half hour online trying to look up christmas light wiring and how to cut up a string of lights i decided to be a little ballsy and fall back on what i thought i knew about electricity and wiring

turns out i knew more than i gave myself credit for and
BAM:

i didn't get any in progress pictures because i wasn't even thinking of posting this project on here until i had finished the string of lights already

well thats enough for tonight
tune in next time for me breaking into the pufferfish/trying to make a hole in the float/getting the lights to stay in the fish and float/trying to tie a net around the float/whatever else it's going to take...man i have a lot of work to do...haha