Lamps and other tiki projects. Puffer in a float lamps.

Hello all! :)

I love browsing this forum, its pretty cool how everyone displays their art and shares their skills with everyone, so I decided to post my attempts as well, a few things that I made over past few years. I have found Tiki to be very inspirational in many many ways and I'm into everything from lamp making to jewelry and mugs and planning on finally trying my hand at carving this summer.
When we first got into Tiki, I fell in love with floats and float lamps eventually, I did some research and attempted to tie a few small floats, then sometime later, after some trial and error with spray paint and a few ruined glass floats I made my first float lamp! :)

[ Edited by: spiked 2011-06-14 19:31 ]

[ Edited by: spiked 2011-06-15 10:36 ]

[ Edited by: spiked 2012-09-26 14:47 ]

[ Edited by: spiked 2013-08-06 10:29 ]

[ Edited by: spiked 2015-01-07 10:34 ]

That little buddy went to its new home to friend of mine, it was 10" glass globe.
After more trial and error, and a suggestion from a friend to keep practicing and working on my netting skills, I made a few more globes, and figured out the type of paint and globe I want to use.

Here are a few more that I made past few years.
12" glass one

Acrylics-6" ones

here they are lit up:

[ Edited by: spiked 2015-08-18 05:15 ]

Here is a lighter blue one I had hanging outside and a huge monster 16" globe that took a very long time to tie and lots a lots of cans of paint! :D

Didn't get a chance to take a pic of it lit up, but you can see sunlight coming though it below

I've also been obsessed with shrunken heads, so I sorta converted one of the cheapy party store ones into a light, lol!

Puffer lamps are hard to find and they cost a lot plus the ship, so I figured, I'm gonna try to make one. Found a local supplier of puffers(no more unfortunately) and made a few puffers as well!

Then and of course, naturally, once you have done a puffer, on to the next-my all time fav tiki lamp :D puffer in a float! Yes. They make me bleed, ouch, but they are worth it! :)
Here it is along with green one-of my first glass ones I made. This one also went to a good home last week.

I hope you like them!
Thank you for looking!!!

-Lena.

Nice! I've been in the middle of a float lamp project for some time! Hope to finish it soon. Yours look great!

Puffer in the float are pretty cool and not that hard to make, I have seen several people made them here.
There are a thread here somewhere on how to make a plain puffer lamp. I'm just throwing in a few photos of a process I took. a Dremel is your friend.

Shell lamps!
They are also fun to make, I'm planning on making a few more again. Here is my first one. I lost some of the photos of the process, but here is what I got. I don't have many tools yet, so I just use that I have. I found that ship's wheel from Michael's unfinished wood aisle is perfect size and sturdy enough for a heavy lamp like that.

Here are a few more I made a while ago, bamboo ones were a special request from a friend.

Spiked, you've been busy! Good looking lamps there.

Sorry to bombard with images, lol, I got a few more to show :)
I have been discovering wonderful world of resin, and obsessed with it now as well. I loooove old Orchids and Oceanic Arts lamps, and I'm a big fan of Kahaka and TSkip's work, so I tired my hand at making some basket/resin/tapa combo's. They aren't perfect, but good enough to hang in my dark bar :P

First one of it's type:

Basket/hat/resin combos

and our most fav so far:

Thank you, guys!! :)

WOW WOW WOW!!

I love all the lamp makers here and you're on the list now too.

Nice stuff.

Great stuff spiked!!! :)

Thank you WD and Jeff!! I finally got around to posting it all, :P

-Lena.

Wow, those are really nice Lena! We lamp makers need to organize a lamp swap! Excellent work.

On 2011-06-15 12:11, KAHAKA wrote:
Wow, those are really nice Lena! We lamp makers need to organize a lamp swap! Excellent work.

Ohhhhh thank you!!! You are the master of the lamp making, sir! I bow to you and your skills, such a compliment coming from you!!! I love all of your work, one day soon I hope to own one of your creations!
Lamp swap would be super awesome! :D
Thank you, thank you again!

-Lena.

Wow, great lamps and a wide aray of styles, good job!

Nice job!!
I knew once you started tyeing you would get better and better.
Just got a bunch of resin to do some lights.
Have not seen your bar in some time.
Looks good.

On 2011-06-15 22:31, tikiskip wrote:
Nice job!!
I knew once you started tyeing you would get better and better.
Just got a bunch of resin to do some lights.
Have not seen your bar in some time.
Looks good.

Thank you!!! :D Yeah, I took your advice and kept at it :D
I have been working on the bar a bit lately. We may have another get together soon, before summer is over! :)

Wow, those look great. Need me a puffer in a fish float for my bar.

Thank you Queen and Grog! :) I will be making more puffers-in-the-float soon!

Here are just a few random things that I made..

I think decorated skulls from PNG are pretty neat, and I saw some neat looking ones @ Oceanic Arts a few years ago, when we went, so I made this little buddy last year:

I also been looking around to find a way to make quick and sturdy masks for elements outdoors, so I found plastic PNG Trader Vic looking mold and poured concrete, then just painted it with regular hobby store acrylics. Its good for what it is.

Tiki is really inspiring to me, like I said before and very exciting and it keeps me motivated to try different things.
After being terrified of clay for years ( I don't know why) I wanted to try my hand at it. I love working with clay now, so many options. Please go easy on me, these are my first attempts at the world of ceramics :P

During our trip to Chicago a few years ago, we made a stop at Natural History Museum and checked out their Oceanic exhibit, oh my! They have a huge collection of PNG and NZ items, that I only seen in pictures, just so mind-blowing . I have seen Duk Duk before, but not a life-sized one, lol, so adorable and sinister at the same time, as any other PNG art is.

We fell in love with it, and Jim kept asking me to make him a mug, and that he has an idea for a drink to go with it.

and here is another one, hand built coils, it is small so it holds my swizzles :P

So the proportions were a bit off on the first Duk, so I made another one, just got it back from firing yesterday, and the idea was to make a mold, but the feedback I have been getting is that I should rather sculpt it with modeling clay, then make a plaster mold... Bummer.. I was looking forward to attempting my first plaster mold with this one. Gonna glaze this one up, thinking of going with brown on bottom and white feathers on the hat, just like one @ the museum. What do you think?

WOW! Nice work. You are so versatile!
Love your mugs ...and puffer...and float lamps...and..and..

Love the DukDuks, isn't clay fun!?

Thanks for posting man, you work is inspiring, keep on keeping on

On 2011-07-06 23:49, gold zephyr wrote:
Thanks for posting man, you work is inspiring, keep on keeping on

Thank you! I'm a girl though :wink:

-Lena.

Hey Spiked!

Your float lamps are really well done and look good and vintage. Those night shots are great - your lights add great atmosphere. I'm a sucker for float lamps!

Have fun and keep posting your work - it's all looking great!

Lena-
I just went back and looked through this thread and your lights are great and I'm LOVING the DukDuk. Great job on all of it.

Keep sharing, love looking at those pictures.

DIY RULES!!

Thanks for sharing all this cool handmade art as I find it inspiring to..do handmade art! Full circle DIY!

Hi there! It's been a while since I posted anything, been busy!

Here are a few photo updates in fancy hipster filter 8)

Glazed Duk Duk. I went with same color scheme as the first one.. Haven't had time to make anymore of those or any other mugs this year, hopefully in fall..

I had one of those old Duraglass floats, so I made him a net! New type of the net made with treated rope.

Small 5" yellow float drilled and sandblasted on the inside and out:

A few small floats, and a small 5" lamp,-handblown by me, sandblasted.

9" blue float- handblown by me, net made with hemp rope.

I hope you like it! More coming soon!

[ Edited by: spiked 2012-07-05 11:30 ]

Handblowing your own floats, now that's impressive! Keep up the cool work.

NICE...looking forward to more pics of your fabulous talent!!!

Very good clay work. I look forward to seeing more. Wendy

Thank you very much Mike, Vamp and Wendy! :D I hope to work with clay again very soon.
Glassblowing is so much fun and very challenging! I always wanted to make my own floats and just get exposure to the whole glass art, it is a great medium with so many possibilities!

[ Edited by: spiked 2012-07-11 06:01 ]

Man, so many awesome lamp build in this thread! Love them all.

Yep, love your lamps, I could have a thousand float lamps it seems and still want more.

Thank you :)

I feel the same about floats.. I can never have enough.. After I picked up a book on vintage glass floats, I have become even more obsessed :P

Am in love with the blowfish in the float

Thank you!

Here are the some updates, as I promised.
I have recently been commissioned by the new place in town to make some lamps for them.
They have seen photos of my work so order was really specific to what they wanted and what worked for them for the vision that they had.
Here are is what they ended up with, first is a picture that one of the owners snapped of me, when I delivered the lamp:

One of two of my glass blown floats that they have:

The most exciting to make were two custom pieces that I personally just love!!
I have collaborated with an amazing artist and great friend Capt'n Skully and equally amazing artist and friend Bob, to make them super cool and awesome- :D -Tiki drum lamp (Kona Style Lono Drum lamp) and a skull chandelier, (Matau Skull lamp).

Here are some of the photos of the progress:

SKULLS!!

HOOKS!

FIGHTS!!!!!

I had one more skull left over, so I decided to make a reproduction of one of the Papua New Guinea decorated skulls from 'Oceanic Art' book by Anthony J P Meyer.
He now lives above the bar and named 'The Seventh Skull' :)

Thank you for looking!

-Lena

Here is the link to the article, a lot of love went into making this place happen!

http://www.columbusunderground.com/the-making-of-a-tiki-bar-behind-the-scenes-at-grass-skirt

[ Edited by: spiked 2012-09-26 14:43 ]

[ Edited by: spiked 2012-09-26 14:44 ]

Love the skulls with the PNG decoration.

Astounding work!

I am in LOVE with the glowing puffer fish in the globes! And the skulls - gasp! So great!

Henrik "VanTIki"

WOW Lena!

So much cool stuff, you are just bubbling over with creativity! Love the giant fishhook lamp with the skulls.

I really LOVE the puffer fish in the float lamp! AMAZING!!!

Thank you all so much!! :)
I cannot wait to get started on new stuff!!

SO MUCH AWESOME IN ONE THREAD!

Oh wow! It's been a while!!
I hope all is well!

New Skull- still in process..

Red Glass float with cotton rope-8"

Puffer in a float-12"

Thank you for looking!!!

Lena.

[ Edited by: spiked 2015-01-07 12:06 ]

Yikes, I thought the tiki lamp was scary, then skulls and warriors and moar skullz...

I luv it

Thank you! :)

WOW, Lena!!!

Amazing stuff! Just saw this thread today for the first time. That Skull/Hook chandelier is awesome! I couldn't scroll through the in-progress photos fast enough to get to the finished piece... and what a beauty! The Capt'n Skully/Bob collaboration is pretty freakin' incredible too!

You mentioned commissions for a local establishment... where is it? Some place that's cool enough to have some of your lamps must be a great place to hang out! Would like to find out more about that place!

Thanks for posting!

I am sorry I missed your thread before now, all I can say is WTF!
F***ing great work! looking forward to the next project.

Good stuff. GROG like.