Pete Geiger of Cary spent years painting acrylic replicas of sports figures and baseball cards from his former home in Long Island, N.Y., before he had a revelation.

“I had license plates,” he said. “And I play the guitar.”

While admitting that those two objects aren’t commonly linked, Geiger, 46, a married father of three, said the idea struck him one day to use old license plates to create artistic replicas of guitars. His first creation used an expired New York license plate from his wife Debbie’s Acura MDX.

“I was always an artist,” Geiger said. “Before this, I would paint. But then I realized that there’s no real ‘guitar art.’ If you’re a guitarist and you want something related to guitars, there’s nothing.”

The response to his first replica guitar was positive, he said. So Geiger, an auditor by day, created another and then another. Interest in his work began to grow.

“People would come over to the house, and whoever would come over would always comment on it,” Geiger said of his artwork. “Then people started saying they wanted them, so I started making more of them.”

When the Geigers moved south about two years ago, Pete’s hobby moved with them. A storage room in the basement of the Geigers’ home in the Highcroft subdivision has become Pete’s makeshift workshop.

The floor of his workshop is littered with license plates from California to Kansas to the Carolinas. Geiger buys the license plates from sellers on the popular online auction site eBay. Most are relatively inexpensive.

“The good ones you get for between $10 and $15,” he said. “But it’s funny because for the colorful ones, you tend to pay more. And the older the plate, you’ll pay even more.”

Because he’s an artist, Geiger said, color drives his work. During a recent demonstration of his process, Geiger chose two California license plates — one featuring a blue sky and a bright, smiling sunshine and the other a more common white license plate with black and red text — to form the face of the guitar.

Geiger cuts the license plates to fit on a guitar-shaped, fiber board cutout. When necessary, he grinds down the edges or strips off the paint with an electric sander to give individual pieces a weathered or antique appearance.

“It’s a fun process,” Geiger said.

So far this year, Geiger has made about 100 replica guitars. He expects that total to climb to 250 by the end of the year.

“It’s starting to catch on,” said Geiger, whose works are featured at Imaginese and N.C. Crafts, art galleries in Cary and Carrboro, respectively. Geiger also was on hand during last year’s Lazy Daze festival.

“People get excited about it because they think it’s good folk art,” he said. “No two are ever the same. That’s what I think makes them special.”