Few crafters can allow themselves to even dream about vacating their vocation to work full-time on their beloved avocation, but it’s no dream for Deneen Sakugawa of Maui.

For the past six years she has added sparkle to everyday objects and made her living doing so, meeting local customers and visitors who have become repeat customers and making new friends along the way.

Using tweezers and E6000 glue, Sakugawa hand-places Swarovski crystal elements on wearable or otherwise usable items to make them sparkle, including golf markers, hair clips, hat bands, caps, iPhone covers, lauhala headbands and more.

Some of the best-sellers for Wailuku-based Maui Bling by Deneen LLC are items Sakugawa initially thought would not be popular.

"The flower story is a good mistake," she said.

"I never used to have any flowers at all," she said. But at a craft fair — since she always brings supplies and items she can work on — she went way overboard and "slathered" an entire flower-shaped hair clip with crystals then stuck it in her hair.

A shopper came to Sakugawa’s booth and asked where in her display were the flowers, because the one in her hair was the only one the customer saw.

"I don’t have any," Sakugawa told the shopper, who immediately wanted to buy the one she was wearing.

"It was hilarious," she said.

The flowers, which come with relatively few crystals for $25 to $28 or in completely covered "Megawatt" versions for $195, are wildly popular, she said. Tourists love them, but so do local people who wear them on their hat bands.

Maui Bling by Deneen gets exposure to visitors four days a week at trunk shows and craft fairs at The Westin Maui Resort & Spa and The Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas. The schedule and locations are on Sakugawa’s website, www.mauiblingbydeneen.com.

Many of her clients, especially those staying in the villas, she has known for years. She has watched their children grow up and has been amused to have them show her, say, a hat they bought six years ago.

"I’ll take a picture of the old one, and put a story on Facebook about it," she said, telling the story from the hat’s perspective. The picture will "show how all of the bling is still in place" even though the hat itself may have faded with time.

In addition to her regular products, Sakugawa accepts custom orders.

"I tell clients that if you bring it, we will bling it. So many people remember that and bring me boxes of stuff from home to have me work on while they are vacationing," she said.

While the Swarovski crystal elements are from Austria, she buys most of her pre-blinged items locally from eight suppliers — mostly on Maui, but there also is one on Oahu.

She has only a few mainland suppliers of products not available in Hawaii, such as the magnetic charms she blings for wine glasses.

"I’m so proud to offer" locally made items, she said. Visitors aren’t here to buy something from another place.

The buying-local mindset has paid off for Sakugawa, as she has been commissioned by Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa to design and produce more than a dozen special pieces incorporating the shape of the Valley Isle for him to give to dignitaries’ wives during his official travels. She will be paid not with taxpayer money but by the Friends of Alan Arakawa account, she said.

Sakugawa is far removed from the workaday office life that led to her business.

She worked in auto insurance in Southern California for 28 years "but I would always be blinging something on the side," including the retractable badge reel for her ID that she and her colleagues were required to wear. Her building-mates became her first customers and she sold 500 "blinged out" badge reels in six months.

Those folks would ask her to add bling to other things, which led her to realize the value of customer input when developing a new line.

"Generally if I hear it two or three times, I’m already late on it and better get into it," she said.

When Sakugawa moved to Maui six years ago, it was to work full-time adding crystals to golf markers and hat clips. Her buyer eventually shipped the work to China, and Sakugawa shifted her focus to craft fairs and doing some wholesaling, though direct-to-customer sales is where she finds the most joy.

"When I got hooked up with these hotels, my business grew like, 50 percent in one year," she said. "I’m so happy."

WHERE TO BUY IT
>> Westin Maui Resort & Spa
>> Westin Kaanapali Ocean Resort Villas
>> Made in Hawaii Festival – Oahu
>> www.mauiblingbydeneen.com

“Buy Local” runs on Aloha Fridays. Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com, or on Twitter as @erikaengle.