Glass floats for your tiki bar at HomeGoods — Mom scores a mother lode for me!

First thing Monday morning, I had an terse email from Pam: “In case you want to hoard some for your tiki bar” with a link to Hukilau friend Tim “Swanky” Glazner’s photo of two big glass floats he found at his local HomeGoods. I had planned on using some glass floats in my future basement tiki bar — and since my Mom lives near a HomeGoods and loves to shop there, I asked if she would mind looking for some of these glass floats for me. As you can tell by the photo, I have an awesome Mom.

Within a few hours, Mom reported back from her expedition — she had hit a mother lode and cleared out her local HomeGoods. The haul — 10 glass floats in several sizes. The large ones are about 11 inches in diameter, she estimates. The smaller ones, about six inches. And, there are a variety of appropriately Oceanic colors — cobalt blue, teal green, aqua, light blue, clear and pale green.

I just love how the mix of colors and sizes all look together. My hope is to collect enough to completely fill the ceiling over my future tiki bar with glass floats — and a few puffer fish lights too, of course.

Pam checked out her local HomeGoods on Wednesday and reported, boo to the hoo, she only found one large glass float, and its was unexcitingly clear. She bought it, even so — because she also is planning a home tiki bar project. Pam told me that she would be totally fine with my Mom going shopping for her in the future — since she had so much luck finding all these great colors and sizes.

The tops of some of the floats have holes in them and could easily be filled with objects or even made into pendant lights for your tiki bar. Swanky plans to turn his HomeGoods glass floats into pendant lights — but he will “frost” the interiors first. Here’s his method, he told us:

What I do is get a paint from Michael’s or other store they used to call glass etching. Could not find it recently, so I just diluted white paint. Swirl it around inside to coat it and drain and dry. Get a uniform white translucent coating. This diffuses the light so when you hang a bulb inside you don’t see it, just the glow. For safety, you should not hang the lamp by the power cord, but a swag chain or something else. I have a big batch of light cords from making puffer fish lamps I use with the smallest watt light bulbs with the frosted finish. Here is a cord, but you can find them cheaper, especially if you buy in bulk: Snap In Candelabra Bulb Socket Black Cord Rotary Switch Country Primitive Lighting Craft Décor (Retro Renovation affiliate link)

[Precautionary Pam notes: Readers, when making and hanging your own lights, do your own thorough research on safety issues so that you can make your own informed decisions.]

The crackle texture on the clear glass float is pretty neat, too.

Mom also bought me this long sea shell garland. Pam got one, too. These will be great to hang among the floats or fasten into a fishing net to help make the ceiling feel lower and create that cozy, tiki bar or cargo hold of a ship — aka Molokai bar  — feeling.

Mom even found me a crab decoration to arrange among the floats.

Howdy hudee! If you have a home tiki bar, or, like me, are starting to hoard collect goodies for a future tiki bar, you might want to (1) run to HomeGoods now and (2) keep an eye on their ever-changing selection of nautical decor especially, we guess, in the spring and summer. Make sure to shop with your “tiki glasses” on — think flotsam and jetsam.

Mega thanks again to Swanky for the tip and to my Mom for securing 10 glass floats for my tiki bar decor stash.

Did you know: Click here to scan our entire category of stories about Tiki Bar Decor