no pressure....cant keep up...

the pictures of some of my Tikis have started to make it around to my friends and their friends and now word is getting around that i am carving Tikis. Thats a good thing right? the other night i got a call from a friend who is opening a bait/ hardware store in melb beach and wanted to know it i would be interested in maybe putting some Tikis in their store. now i would not mind making a few bucks of my artwork but that is not why i am carving Tikis. with out thinking i told my friend that i would not have a problem with putting some Tikis in there shop. After i gave it some thought i started to think better of it. We have been friends for a very long time but I know first hand that money can kill a friendship in no time flat.So if they want i would come out and set some Tikis up out front of their store but i dont know anout just giving them some Tikis to hold on to to sell. on top of that. i was at my another (very close)friends house last night. He was telling his wife about my Tikis. After seeing the pictures she asked if i would be willing to do a tiki for them. they have helped me out in the past. they cave me a place to stay when i got out of the Army. So i feel making them a Tiki would be a fitting way to say thanks. my buddy stopped by tonight to watched the game and while we were talking he told me that what his wife wants it 2 tikis to either side of their massive(60inch) tv in their living room. i only have 2 hands and they both have carpal tunnel. lol looks like i have some carving to do.

Sell some Tikis,it will cover some bills & the cost of making more Tikis
what is the point of making art if no one sees or want's it.
of course you want to make some for friends, that's what friends do....so enjoy.

Everyone you meet will want a tiki - few will want to pay for them. People will continue to ask for tikis till you establish a value to them. That will also give the free ones more "brownie points". Lets see some pics!

On 2012-09-18 06:27, AlohaStation wrote:
Everyone you meet will want a tiki - few will want to pay for them. People will continue to ask for tikis till you establish a value to them.

Yep, that's been my experience. I can't make enough to fulfill all the free tikis everyone wants to actually sell any. My policy though is i generally give one each to family and few close friends who request them. Anyone outside that circle has to buy one.

On 2012-09-18 01:24, Atomic Tiki Punk wrote:
what is the point of making art if no one sees or want's it.
of course you want to make some for friends, that's what friends do....so enjoy.

Atomic: agree to a certain extent, it's cool to have people want your art, however, a good many of us feel compelled to make stuff just for the sake of doing it. :wink:

A-hem. Pics!

Pics are here: http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=43738&forum=1&3

Some nice contrast work and hopefully more to come.

Mahalo

McTiki

I gave most of 'em away at first, and sometimes still do...

don't worry about money at first. just worry about making cool stuff & developing your own original style.

and yeah, everyone is gonna want one for free so be judicious about who gets 'em. The family that took you in when you got out of the army definitely sounds like a perfect candidate for a freebie.

i thank you all for the input i will put some more pics up soon my camera is not working at the moment.i have a few tikis that are in all different stages of being worked on. i am all for giving one here and there to friends but handing them over for someone to sell in their store seems risky to me. i am trying to focus on pushing my skills to the next level. but most of all for me it is about the process of creating art. i have always love making things. does not matter to me if i am carving wood, welding metal art, drawing or even play with paint. i love to be able to crack open a beer stand back and say "yeah i made that" i dont know if that makes any sense to the rest of you but the feeling i get when i am making art is why i do what i do.

I can totally relate to that sentiment. That's probably why I still own 99% of everything I've ever created.

I'm a hoarder.......

Mahalo

McTiki

well, I'm kinda with you on "consigning".

For one thing I don't like making something and then giving someone else half of my money. And yeah, I feel the same way about stuff being stolen. Or what if they just decide they like it and just take it home themselves and tell me is was ripped off?

My favorite is restaurant owners. They always want you to put tikis in their restaurants on a consignment basis. And they're big pitch is "you'll get so much exposure", which is really just a load of bullshit. People don't go to restaurants to buy home decor. And people who see neat stuff at restaurants don't just assume things are for sale. So I always say to them "so basically you want me to decorate your restaurant for free, and on the off chance that something actually sells, you want half the money.....yeah, that's not what I do." Then I tell them I've been featured on several news broadcasts and newspapers and I'm all stocked up on 'exposure'....I need ACTUAL MONEY...

In general I would be wary of anyone selling EXPOSURE. In the tiki world "exposure" means "we want some free stuff".

[ Edited by: pjc5150 2012-09-19 08:06 ]

On 2012-09-18 14:04, McTiki wrote:
I can totally relate to that sentiment. That's probably why I still own 99% of everything I've ever created.

I'm a hoarder.......

Mahalo

McTiki

Yeah same here, i get attached to my carvings. Its like giving birth. I went through all that work, i cant sell it after all we went through together. Thats why my prices are so high. Lol.

When I started creating for others several years back I realized that I could never keep up with custom requests.

At one point I had 40 people waiting for a custom frame and I was carving it all by hand at the time so each one took me about 2 weeks (after work and spare time on the weekends)

I realized that all of the enjoyment was being sucked out of the process because now I had people waiting on me. The longer they waited the more disappointed they became.

Instead of making someones day, I felt like I was letting someone down.

I decided to completely wipe out the "list" and just make stuff when I had time and find a buyer for it AFTER the product was complete.

Pricing is all an issue of finding the right audience/buyer. Unless you are remarkably fast or have some way to automate, its unlikely you will charge a price that will make this worth your time.

Mostly I found that the money I earned kept me from watching so much TV and helped defray the costs of attending tiki events. In the end... I do it because I like it. When I dont like it, I stop and wait a while.

Good luck

On 2012-10-15 10:23, Monkeyman wrote:

I decided to completely wipe out the "list" and just make stuff when I had time and find a buyer for it AFTER the product was complete.

In the end... I do it because I like it. When I dont like it, I stop and wait a while.

Good luck

Unless you are trying to make a living at it - I couldn't agree more!

Ya, that's the truth of it, I still make shelves & frames etc.
At the prices I have to charge to sell em, I loose money too
But it is a good feeling to have something you made in someones home or bar.

On 2012-10-15 12:19, Atomic Tiki Punk wrote:
Ya, that's the truth of it, I still make shelves & frames etc.
At the prices I have to charge to sell em, I loose money too
But it is a good feeling to have something you made in someones home or bar.

That sums it up for me. Good perspectives coming from a diverse sample. I have been working as an Engineer for nearly 30 yrs, with a decade or so of active duty prior....

I carve because I never thought I could until I tried.....yeah, they take a while but Love seeing them go to good home...... those of us that soul. Carve.....carve soul into the Tikis!

Dude, been there. I have seen the place where I got so in demand and so far behind on paid commissions that it completely burned me out and became a job that I dreaded instead of a passion. I'm just now getting the fire again after another two year hiatus. I still owe work to three major clients that is in various stages. My advice: Carve on a "Not for sale until complete-first come, first serve" basis, and only on your own island time. Especially if you produce every object on your own and are a one man show. That said, I still love Polynesian/ Pacific Rim art and I still love Tiki carving.