Tiki bar lights

A silly, but fairly easy project that made a surprisingly good effect. I bought a basket of sea shells and a couple of small puffer fish and super glued them to a string of two dollar Xmas lights. :D

Not the greatest pictures, but you get the idea. I'll string them up in my Tiki Hut this Winter along with my cheesy Chinese lantern lights and my even cheesier flamingos and palm tree lights. :P

[ Edited by: Rattiki on 2003-11-08 03:24 ]

Did you just superglue the lights to the pufferfish? or did you make a small hole in the fish's dorsal region?

On 2003-11-08 07:23, freddiefreelance wrote:
Did you just superglue the lights to the pufferfish? or did you make a small hole in the fish's dorsal region?

I made a hole in a spot that I thought would display the fish's better side when strung up.

Where do you even find puffer fish like those? Tourist shops? I think I recall seeing them as achild in touristy places. Did I answer my own question?

I'm going to look for some in the local shell shops, otherwise I once posted a link on how to make a blowfish lamp:

http://www.njstriper.com/AskFish.asp?Action=View&ID=64

Woah! I'm a fisherman who cleans and eats his own fish, but I'm not going through all that. I think i'll try the local shell shop. Very informative though freddie.

Or you could construct a vegan pufferfish lamp like i did here..

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=3364&forum=1

On 2003-11-08 14:41, FLOUNDERart wrote:
Where do you even find puffer fish like those? Tourist shops? I think I recall seeing them as achild in touristy places. Did I answer my own question?

I got the two on eBay for $10 for both, inc. S&H. The small ones are common in the mainland Florida shell shops.

On 2003-11-08 17:49, atomictonytiki wrote:
Or you could construct a vegan pufferfish lamp like i did here..
http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=3364&forum=1

LOVE that! Now need to create some mini papier mache tikis and blowfish with rice paper for the little lights and monster ones for a big lamp.

Last year around xmas I was describing those lights also-they do look great. I had done a tropical tree and had done the shells but not the puffer fish. Great idea! Here at the flea market there's a shell shop where the puffer fish are quite cheap. Thanks for the pics!

On 2003-11-08 17:49, atomictonytiki wrote:
Or you could construct a vegan pufferfish lamp like i did here..

Very cool! But how did you know he's a vegan? :-?

:wink:

Now those are very cool. I love those puffers. Beats the hell out of the Party City cheesehead variety!

I also made some cool low voltage lights for my tiki bar and a fake puffer fish too.

My tiki bar is portable so all it's lights must be able to last for weeks on battery power alone. Recently a company called superbrightleds.com sold me some fantastic LEDs. I have 10 red LEDs shine on the moai heads and front of the bar, 10 aqua blue LEDs that shine down on the liquor shelves in back. I use a 6 volt lantern battery to power my lights and there are websites which help you calculate the size of resistor that needs to go with each LED.

I got a plastic puffer fish and poked a hole in it and inserted a superbright white LED, then ran a wire up the a resistor and 9V battery.

So far all these light have run over 48 hours and have not used one battery yet.

Here a picture of me with my bar at night, the flash washes out the cool red lights but you can see the puffer fish light in the photo.

[ Edited by: captnkirk on 2003-12-15 21:25 ]