Deland Tiki - Custom Tiki Artistry |

Tiki Oasis Fashion Show

We were so lucky to be included again in the Tiki Oasis Vintage Fashion Show. We offered up a matching purse and bar set, and they looked so good on stage, thanks to the hard work of the organizers. This is not just a walk down the runway, they really play it up and dance along to a great soundtrack. Just really perfect for the scene!

Practically could have sold it off the stage with the ooh and aahs it got! And sell it did, although we have all the parts and pieces to make more. Next post will be closeups of some of the new things we made for the show, including one of our most elaborate bar cases yet.

Many thanks to Tiki-Tim for the pictures. I had some similar shots but he really does everyone a service by taking beautiful photos of all the events we go to. Here are some more highlights of the show. Many pieces of fashion I wish I could just clone into my size right that second.

 

What makes the work worth it

Hard to believe you can start the week on one side of the country, and find yourself with a full day at this treasure on the other coast. We don’t start vending to Saturday so we get Friday to hang out and get acclimated to the event and a chance to talk to our friends and hopefully future customers. The day went by very fast, with us starting the day off by the pool listening to the incredible DJ’s, seeing a swimsuit fashion show, getting all pretty for the night show and the incredible line-up of bands, and then mustering the energy to crawl from party to party getting free liquor. Not a bad to-do list!

I took hundreds of photos but these are my favorite random pictures from that fabulous first day. Also the nights entertainment including the fashion show, that had our purse and bar case in it. Of course that will get a post all its own. I spent hours just talking to new people and past years friends, and it is a true luxury to find ourselves there among like minded tiki freaks! The room crawls and parties defy imagination. You see bands, get boozed up by the best mixologists around, you stand in line for hours going from elevator to room to room and many times you will find a band in there too. I don’t even know if I could ever really describe what a spectacle this all is, solely for the love of partying to a poly-pop interpretation of ancient islanders religion.

We’ve met the fine folks behind Lost in Paradise, and they have some neat well produced segments of the days events. Worth the watch!

Lost in Paradise

Tomorrow the Fashion Show post. Some great pictures and they made our stuff look great!

Back at the Bali Hai!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are finally back home from our grand adventure to Tiki Oasis in San Diego, and after a whirlwind 4 days we are just now starting to process all the fun that was had with our tiki loving Ohana. I figure the best way to start what will be a week of blogging is by our first big stop of our trip, the Bali Hai’s Thursday night kick off party!

We quickly checked into our room to get freshened up before going out and greeting the people filtering into the Hanalei Hotel. We scored a wicked wedding set for a ridiculously low price on Etsy, and the Bali Hai was the perfect place to take it out, even if it was the first night. After all, being next to the big guy is the photo op we fly cross country for. Celebrities have chosen this spot too!

 

First stop before the Bali Hai though was Trader Mort’s, also on Shelter Island. An iconic location and a chance to stock up on room drinks…perfect!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our time at the Bali Hai was quite the blur, thanks to the very stiff drinks and the bands and burlesque going on. The first night of any of these shows is quite the catch up session with all your friends, except this time you get to look at the gorgeous San Diego Skyline.

There are so many more pictures to share of our big trip, including some of new items made for the show that found new homes (but we can make more!) If we met you for the first time in San Diego then welcome to our blog! There will be lots to see on here this week!

Live at Tiki Oasis

First mobile blog post! If you are in San Diego come on out. Lots of vendors and free to get in!

Sneak Peeks!

We are putting the finishing touches on everything and starting to load our precious cargo into suitcases, but I took some time from the happy chaos to take some pictures of our newest work. These are just the new ones that currently have handles, we can’t wait to show off everything new in San Diego!

We will have several bar cases and some new lamps too. Now just to get all this stuff packed up and get ourselves to Tiki Oasis!

Introducing our Online Store!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are always pleasantly surprised by how many people have seen our online listings on our Etsy and Ebay pages, but our goal for a very long time was to have a fully functional online store for direct ordering. We are still expanding it daily, but we are proud to announce that you can now find many of our purses and some of our tikis in our catalog page on this site. Click on the Online Store button and it will take you right too it.

Each listing is different, with many purses having the option to choose different colors than what is pictured. It will take you through every step including checkout nice and easy. We will still be making most of them custom at time of purchase so expect an email from us to finalize all details (since you should always be able to get exactly what you want!) but any ease of navigation is a plus in my book! There will be tons of new listings in the next few weeks too. If you don’t see what you want, always contact us directly at DeTiki@yahoo.com. We have never gotten a request we haven’t been able to pull off, and we love doing them!!

To celebrate this new feature we are offering the same special we are giving our Tiki Oasis customers that we get to see in a few short days. Place any purse or bar case order  today through 8/22/2011 and we will send along a t-shirt with your order! We would love to come home to a list of new work to do that will keep us going through the next month or two- so we are ready to sweeten the deal. Choose from the new store or contact us direct!

Today purses are getting their hardware and almost ready for their pictures and sneak peeks. Looking forward to some wicked new things  to show off in Cali!

Our newest wheeled addition

After months of searching and craigslist failures Justin has finally scored the latest project of his dreams. It is not only old car lust around here, and after two of his other club brothers scored Scwhinns and spent several car shows tooling around on them, Justin started his vintage bicycle search in earnest. Vintage Muscle Bikes can score big dollars, so we knew it was going to be a while before we found something that was even close to our meager budget, but we were willing to get a fixer-upper.

Meet our fixer upper! We have been moments too late on a couple candidates on Craigslist so when this dropped in our lap because of our awesome friends that think of us…well we are both choosing to believe this was supposed to find us. It is a early 70′s Western Auto Buzz Bike Eliminator, and not only is it mostly original it is even the color of our Birdie! We need a tire and some elbow grease but it is going to be hitting the car show pavement in time for the Rumblers Show in September! For now we are just going to shine and clean it, but here is what one that is perfect looks like-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some more shots of our new beauty, and we will be sure to update the progress along the way. We are in the full hustle bustle getting ready for Tiki Oasis, and will have previews of some amazing new work and a special for our online customers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Custom Goodness!

We have been diligently working for the last couple weeks on a very special order that we have just been dying to tell everyone about, and now we can! After meeting us both at Viva Las Vegas and Ohana: Luau at the Lake, the lovely couple behind Cats Like Us took the plunge and placed a wholesale order from us, including a exclusive design that they came up with that will only be available on their website. We love being able to do that for our clients, and we are IN LOVE with what we ended up with.

Check out the Cats Like Us Kitty Purse!

They also have some of our other designs, including the Camp Fizzy and our KU Vs. Volcano purse. They have a huge assortment of awesome products, and their whole website is worth a look through. Cats Like Us.

We are in the full hustly bustle of getting ready for Tiki Oasis, so lots more sneak peeks of new product this week. No sleep till San Diego!!

We have the coolest customers!

One of the best things about having a tiki business is that you know most of your customers are going to be as weirdly obsessed with Polynesian Pop as you are. We always ask our clients to send us pictures of our items in situ, partially because it is good for business, but more because we are just morbidly curious to see what everyone else is up to. Time and time again we are blown away by the places that our work is going in to, but this one from Bryan and Anne and their Boom Boom room have set a new bar. I don’t think I have ever seen a room so filled with not only tons of vintage goodies, but also all the heavy weights in the modern tiki scene.

Above is the picture of the tiki that we did for them last summer, a 3 foot high tiki that we sloped the headdress and cut-outs for back lighting, in order to really get the mysterious goin-on (because all good tiki rooms have to have tons of dim light highlighting the treasures from other lands) and we just couldn’t be more honored to see him in such an amazing Tiki room. I have gone through these photos at least a dozen times and find a new artist or piece I covet in each one. I will point out a couple, but otherwise enjoy this spectacular tiki tour.

We are working on a new piece for them and can’t wait to show it off. Many many thanks for letting us and our readers see your fabulous space- and consider this a call to some of our other customers to get some pictures to us, we just love seeing them!

This week we are in full work mode banging out orders and new product that we can’t wait to debut. Then it will be off to Tiki Oasis, but not before we give you almost a full month of sneak peeks of our new designs!

Tiki Revelry in the face of a Mountain Monsoon

While we had envisioned slightly cooler but sunny days high up in the mountains, what we really got in Lake George was a serious summer drenching that followed us from Pennsylvania all the way up state, and then continuing all the way into Saturday afternoon. It was gloomy. It was cold. It was un relenting. But no amount of rain was going to keep a hotel full of Tiki freaks from putting on a hell of a party.

Thursday night after bowling people carried on through the night with tents and room parties, that lasted well into the morning. The next day it was still pouring, and people were getting a very late start. We went and got our goodie bags and Ohana badges, then headed about town looking for drink ingredients for the cocktail contest the next day. Friday is room crawl night and Justin hit every one it seemed, wandering in and out of highly decorated hotel rooms. The next day it was time for the most action, including the relay race, silent auction, vending, and the luau poolside that evening. The sky finally cleared up and that is when we got the most photos- finally no drops on the camera lens!

My collection of pictures seems so woefully inadequate to really capture this amazing event. It is kept small but really, a full hotel is a lot of people, so there was always a ton of action, lots of conversations, fun activities to keep people busy and in the moment. Out of all the events we have done we feel like this one we were really able to immerse ourselves in while working at the same time. If you haven’t been to this event then I would try to make it to 2012. We will not be missing another one.

There are so many more pictures and information on their facebook page (including some that I used for this post) http://www.facebook.com/OhanaLuau. The resort is like a tiki time capsule and they are only doing more to play up their heritage. Justin and I put visiting this place on the same level as our time at the Mai Kai or at the Bali Hai. It is that neat.

Next up will be some pictures of our recent souvenirs, product that was made and sold in the weeks we were on the road, and the continued expansion of our online shop. Everything that you see on the site can be duplicated or customized, so if you are thinking about a piece don’t be afraid to contact us directly. We love making all sorts of stuff and would never be able to keep up an online shop with all the options we are capable of.

The giveaway is still on! Make sure to visit our Facebook page!