Balloon sculptures

There’s an infinite amount of creations to be made from balloons. If you can imagine it then you can make it. The difficult thing for a balloon twister is deciding what goes in the repertoire. This is an interesting process filled with joy and frustration. Usually for every four designs I make, only one I will make again.

It starts of by seeing a design I like, usually on You Tube or a picture online. Sometimes I’m really excited to make it as it looks awesome and seeing it come to shape in front of you is a thrill. So I will begin making the design with suspense and intrigue.

It can go one of a few ways. Sometimes it will take me a few attempts to make and then when I finally do, I conclude that it’s going to take too long to make at a gig. I’ll either come back to it in a few months when I’m a tad quicker or bear it in mind as something to pre make for a gig if the child has a liking for what it is I made.

Conversely there is that feeling of accomplishment when I make something for the first time, its easy to make and best of all it’s a design that has the wow factor. This happens the other day when I made a monkey. This is only 2 balloons but looks so cool. It’s a bit fiddly but I can make it in two minutes. Soon as I made this one I posted it to my social networking pages and waited for the likes to come in. It’s quite useful to get this immediate feedback as soon as I’ve finished making something. People seemed to like it so it made the infamous repertoire. Which in reality is a picture gallery on my iPhone I show the kids to pick out a design for me to make them. I’ve learned to put the difficult ones in the top corner so I can place my thumb over it when my hands tire. The tricks of the trade!

So the repertoire grows. The unpopular designs get moved to a folder called ‘old designs’, (or the balloon graveyard). The good designs get better and bigger and start to require new shaped balloons. I spend more money on balloons and further annoy my family who say the same line – ‘why do you need more balloons for?’ To make cooler stuff of course!