Autograph Foliages: faux plants & palms. Unofficial pro-fake plant thread

Autograph Foliages. Cleveland, Ohio

Stumbled across this company when a former associate needed to find realistic looking coconuts, but not real, for a performance. Company specializes in faux foliage. Just from perusing a bit, they have fire proofed items as well , such as indoor/outdoor thatch. Faux potted palms. Faux bamboo plants too. Neato.

Bummer is they have a $100.00 minimum order. You can still order under the $100.00 mark, but expect to pay a $20.00 surcharge to do so.

UPDATE: Spoke with a sales rep. They won't give our their prices to the "general public." They will send their catalogue to people in the decorating biz. Us regular folk can purchase their stuff through their online retailer, Earth Flora.
Thanks Tikigik for letting me know the link failed.

For those of us who are not home enough, plants in the tiki bar that don't need water is a great thing.

[ Edited by: I dream of tiki 2006-04-04 10:48 ]

I dream of tiki wrote:

UPDATE: Spoke with a sales rep. They won't give our their prices
to the "general public." They will send their catalogue to people
in the decorating biz. Us regular folk can purchase their stuff
through their online retailer,
Earth Flora.
(I fixed this URL.)
I REALLY like THIS:
http://earthflora.com/store/cart.php?target=product&product_id=22246&category_id=960

Fake plants do better in a tiki bar's low light environment, too. Real plants will get leggy & pale if they don't have enough light. One real plant that does okay is the Janet Craig dracaena, which is why it's so ubiquitous in offices:

But it just screams "gray cubicles and fluorescent lights!" to me, so I say fake tropicals are the way to go if your home tiki bar is of the low-light variety.

Those fake tropicals look nice, and the prices look pretty reasonable. I think something's wonky with their sale code, though, because their Tillandsias, which are normally $10.90, are "on sale" for $17.95!

I'm working on setting up a temporary tiki bar in my spare bedroom and I'm getting kind of frustrated because I can't find the type of fake plants that would be perfect for my motif. Apparently they don't exist. My bar theme is going to be more on the dark and savage side than, you know, the Kahiki or something. No aloha spirit, just tikis and skulls and seductive wahines. I've been trying to find online someone who makes fake plants that are more on the macabre side. Black Orchids, giant flytraps, pitcher plants, creepy jungle vines, that sort of stuff. Nothing cartoony, just strange and unusual. I can't find squat! I've been searching fake plant sites and horror prop sites but zip, zilch, nada.

I naively thought this would be a niche market for the goth and horror types but apparently not. Anyone have any ideas?

Ooh, that sounds cool. I used to have a bunch of fake Paphiopedilum orchids in dark purple, those would probably work well for you. They looked a lot like this:

http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~nroberts/Paphiopedilum_lawrenceanum-ciliolare.JPG

Unfortunately, for the life of me, I cannot remember where I got them. One less-than-ideal option could be to purchase silk plants and flowers that are approximately the right shape, and then paint/discolor them to look more macabre (the low-light lets you get away with a lot in that regard). I'll keep thinking, maybe more will come to me.

On 2006-04-03 16:31, Humuhumu wrote:
One less-than-ideal option could be to purchase silk plants and flowers that are approximately the right shape, and then paint/discolor them to look more macabre (the low-light lets you get away with a lot in that regard). I'll keep thinking, maybe more will come to me.

Thanks Humu. I've been thinking I'm going to have to do what you suggest and paint some existing flowers and that's no problem but I REALLY want an oversized flytrap. :lol: I can't make one of those. I was at Old Time Pottery today and I was looking for some creepy jungle vines to drape across the roof of my bar and all they had was ivy. Boring. I thought Spencers might have some of this sort of thing around Halloween but thats quite a bit to wait.

On 2006-04-03 16:39, Kono wrote:
I was looking for some creepy jungle vines to drape across the roof of my bar and all they had was ivy. Boring.

Oh, I am totally with you on that. I've been wanting to do a similar thing with my outdoor bar. I've been thinking some old worn fishnet with maybe some small floats attached and some creepy vines working their way through them. Then get creative with the lights and maybe have some hidden colored (red?) spots highlighting it from different directions.

Here's a dumb question. If the vines, flowers, etc. were silk, could you dye them to get your dark look effect? Dump 'em in a vat of RIT dye and come back later?

I always thought fake plants would be a natural with tiki bars since they both try to celebrate the authentic feeling(Hawaii, a real plant) but never escape the artifice on either. Today I found a small sale at a retirement home and they were selling a few of the plastic plants that adorned part of the main lobby for years. After some much needed dusting they were ready to go. Now I’m hoping to compliment this space with a few more so it looks likes a Charles Adams cartoon, anyone got a man eating plant?