My very first Tiki piece - 0 cost!

I had this Tiki carving hanging on my wall for some time (see Home Bars posts) but it was flat and boring, so after seeing so many posts here I was super motivated to try my hand at a original piece of art for my soon-to-be-created Tiki room. Its mostly a "how to" sorta thing with stuff that was laying around for a few years in my garage, yard, and home. Enjoy!

First I had to scrounge around the place for some materials, found two old Tiki torches laying around the yard for a very long time. Been rained on and neglected for a year or two. Perfect!

Time to let them dry out along with some other bamboo material left over from past projects....

Henry, Ralph and Waldo aren't to happy about that!

Old Santa Barbara surf board laying around for a future project...

Now for the raw materials; looks like parts from my old dog house and some other old wood...

Mocking up the parts....

The store-bought Tiki was sorta plain, so I decided to torch it (a trick I learned here by the way!)

Since I wanted the wood to "dissapear" I needed to flat black the base and sides...

You can see the background to the Tiki's head, it was already green from the dog house, and I sprayed the edges "farm implement red" for effect... I also used some wood block, about 1" square, to "lift" the Tiki off the background. This will give the twinkling lights somewhere to go...

Voila! What I forgot to document was installing the twinkling icicle lights (used for christmas) between the Tiki and the background. They really make it look like its on fire! Once I hang it on the wall I'll take a low-light picture and show you. Although a short MPEG would do more justice!

I'll be clear coating the bamboo next...

Here are the lights just behind the Tiki head.

I like it, something cool out of almost nothing!

Instead of just a clearcoat on the bamboo, maybe try a golden stain first, then the clear. Or use varnish, which has a nice warm golden tone to it.

So what's your next piece?

On 2010-12-29 17:58, 4WDtiki wrote:
I like it, something cool out of almost nothing!

Instead of just a clearcoat on the bamboo, maybe try a golden stain first, then the clear. Or use varnish, which has a nice warm golden tone to it.

So what's your next piece?

Thank you! I'll keep that in mind... I'm not sure what the next piece will be. I will make each one to fit my room. This one will get a wall all by itself!

And here it is! Not a good pic, but you get the idea. If you could see it live the background appears to be on fire since the lights twinkle, and I have around 50 of those things jammed behind the Tiki.

WOW...that turned out great!!! Love how you used the torches too.

Very nice! Vamp is right, the 3D effect of the torches sticking out is a nice touch (you must be married or you would have lit the torches in the living room :lol: You can replace the wicks with flicker bulbs if you have to)

You can tell a lot about a man by looking around his garage - welder, torch, dog, fuzzy dice, lowered car - you'll fit in just fine here :D

How creative! Great use of old parts!

Nice upgrade and use of spare materials.