Day 294: Back To School

The semester has started up for me again, and I always like to make something fun for my instructors.

This semester I handed my teachers a modification on a classic. An apple for the teacher... with a happy worm sticking out of it.


It's not a bad thing to give them an apple with a work if it's all balloons, right?


See you tomorrow.

Day 293: The Queen

I've been working on a more advanced Queen's Crown design. It's not something that I can normally do at a restaurant or in a busy line, but if I've got the time I'd like to have a fancy crown that I'm happy to hand out.


Here is someone modeling the current version of the deluxe crown.


See you tomorrow.

Day 292: Alien Hat

I don't really know what to call this one... it was a request that kept giving me trouble.

This guy asked for a skateboarder... the skateboard kept popping on me.
Then the head deflated... and I replaced it with an alien head.
Then I gave the alien a sword.
Then he wanted it to be a hat.


The final product is nothing like how it began.


See you tomorrow.

Day 291: Peace Sign

I don't know why I haven't made a peace sign out of 160's before... it seems like that just should have happened before now.


See you tomorrow.

Day 290: Female Smurf

I'm too lazy to open another window and Google how to spell her name. I'm calling it Female Smurf.

I'm surprised I haven't been getting requests for more smurf balloons, the movie did very well I hear.


Perhaps I'll be asked for them more when the DVD comes out.


See you tomorrow.

Day 285-289: Salon Week

I spent a lot of time at a local Master Cuts this week.
This was Customer Appreciation week, and we wanted to try out having me there to see how the kids liked it.
It went well. The environment was one where I wasn't rushed, so I could make more advanced designs for the customers.


A lot of the pictures from this session of playing catch up will be from the Master Cuts.
The reason I'm behind is that I got a new laptop.
My old laptop is functioning, but the battery died and the place where you plug the power cord in broke as well.
Not something I can use on campus.


Anyway, here are the updates.


Day 285: Chief Wahoo


I don't know if it's baseball season right now... I don't follow sports.
One of the girls at Master Cuts asked me to make something Cleveland Indians related for her boyfriend.
These giant mascot heads are something I build when I go to a game, so I can get on the JumboTron.










Day 286: Sea Turtle
This girl came in to get her hair done before school starts up again.

When she saw I was making balloons for the kids, she jumped in line.


She knew she wanted a turtle, I don't think she was prepared for what she got.


















Day 287: Rubber Ducky




This photo is kind of fun... the girl looks like she's tiny.
She was on the small side to begin with, but when she put on the oversize rubber ducky balloon and I took the picture from a downward angle... it looked like she'd been shrunk.














Here is a picture of the balloon from a better angle.


























Day 288: Balloon Greetings

I made this balloon person to try and catch people's eye as they walked past. I hoped it would help bring in more customers.
The girls told me that they had to chase down people more than once because they kept trying to steal it.


















Day 289: Balloon Pacifier


I usually try not to make balloons for kids under a certain age.
When a parent insists that they will be careful and keep an eye on them, I still make a point of mentioning that they are choking hazards and they need to be extra careful.


This little guy was throwing a fit, but a balloon pacifier calmed him down.
I really hope they never let him put it in his mouth.








See you tomorrow.

New Laptop!

I got a new laptop yesterday.
Currently I'm working on teaching myself all the new features on this thing.
(It's got fingerprint recognition! how cool is that?!)


I'm in the process of transferring over all the stuff I need from the old dead laptop so I can continue with these updates.


I should have all the updates posted by tomorrow morning.


Thanks for being patient.


Mot




-Sent from mobile phone.

Day 284: Browns Bull Dog

I believe this is supposed to be the point where I yell something about The Dog Pound... and perhaps make a football reference.

I won't be doing that... It would be a little silly coming from me.


The last Cleveland Browns balloon I posted was met with a request from one of my regular clients that I make them a big Browns balloon because the pre-season has begun.


I'll tell you what, jowls are hard to make out of balloons.


See you tomorrow.

Day 283: Pterodactyl

You know what's awesome? Dinosaurs.

Yup... and you know what makes them even cooler?


When the can freaking FLY!


Am I right or am I right?




See you tomorrow.

day 282: Stacked Turtle

Here is an example of trying something way outside the normal.

Stacking in balloon terms is when you make clusters of round balloons in particular ways... often to build columns, but sometimes the cluster design will be hung from the ceiling instead.


Stretch the Balloon Dude showed me a new way to use stacked balloons.


Here is an example of making an animal using a cluster.


This is a very versatile technique.


See you tomorrow.

Day 281: Clover

I had a grand opening at one of the restaurant chains I entertain for a couple nights ago, they asked me to build them a big clover to have in the entryway.


This was s fun design to work out.
The center is 350's, and the petals are 260's.


See you tomorrow.

Day 281: Go Browns!

I did a charity event over the weekend that was designed to raise money to help students injured in school football accidents. It was a pretty cool event, lots of scrimmage games, a cheer leading clinic, and a bunch of other organizations showing their support.


When I had time off and on throughout the day, I worked on this football player. I wouldn't get more than a couple min at a time before my line would start up again, so this guy took me over 3 hours to complete.


I was going to offer him up to the people in charge of the raffle, but because it was so hot that day, and it had taken me so long to make... the football player was rather wilted.


Instead, I gave it to this little boy here. He was the past person in my line before I had to shut down and head to my next booking.


See you tomorrow.

Day 274-280: I've got internet again!

I know many of you are probably tired of me making this complaint... but I can't freaking stand Time Warner Cable.
I didn't have Internet for a week, and it was all their fault.
Not even in the normal way where they mess something up and my service suffers for it because for forcing bandwidth caps on my area... "Unlimited Internet" my butt.
TWC had techs out taking care of my neighbors cable, because they were experiencing service problems... and while they were messing around with the big box at the street, they somehow unplugged me.
I called several times, and they kept telling me that my loss of internet was connected to another larger problem they were having and it would be fixed soon... couldn't give me a ballpark... just soon.
5 day went by, and still not internet, so I call to complain some more.
They send out a tech.
The tech is here for all of 5 min before she goes out to the big box by the street to see if the problem is there.
The problem was there.
She plugged my cable back in and almost immediately everything was up and running.


I'm now ready to resume making these silly balloon posts.




Day 274: Big Iron Man

Here is a jumbo sized Iron Man I did for a birthday party last week. It is made almost entirely from 650's. I had planned to draw on the face once it was done, but I'm not confident enough in my drawing skills to not mess that up.
The birthday boy had a lot of fun running around with this balloon pretending that he was inside the Iron Man suit and shooting people.












Day 275: Tiny Parrot

I have had a series of tiny animal requests lately, so I thought I'd put them all together in this post. Here is the first one I tried to shrink down, and tried to make it so that the parrot could ride on a finger.
All the tiny animals were made from only 160's








Day 276: Tiny Elephant

Just like with the bird above, this elephant has been shrunk down.
I think that the basic design for the elephant turned out just fine when made mini.












Day 277: Diminished Dolphin

The dolphin was one I wasn't sure would shrink down correctly, I used more balloons that I expected to... I now know how the proportions needed to be adjusted, and can do it more efficiently next time.








Day 278: Little Whale

Since I was able to pull off the dolphin, I was confident that the whale wouldn't present too much of a challenge. Turns out I was correct. I even made it out of a lot less balloons, so I wasn't too wasteful in this build.






Day 279: Baby Penguin

The same girl that requested the whale is the one that started off this while tiny trend the week before with a desire to have a baby penguin.














Day 280: Owl

I made an own for a woman that needed it for something having to do with the scout troop she was associated with. She explained it to me, but I can't seem to remember the particulars now. This was a design I did on the fly (Pun intended. puns are always intended) since I couldn't remember what my old owl looked like. This one is much better than the old design.








And with that, I'm caught up once again.


See you tomorrow.

Almost There

The internet has been out in my area of Ohio for a while now. I haven't been able to connect since Monday.


As soon as I'm able to get a good connection I'll make up all the posts I've missed this week.


Sorry for the delay.


Mot

-Sent from mobile device

Day 273: Jumbo Swan

I've mentioned in previous posts that I've been experimenting with changing the sizes of my designs. Seeing how building them out of the smaller and larger balloons change up how I need to make them, and if I prefer making them out of the non standard sizes. For the most part I'm finding that I like building most any shape out of the larger balloons. Bigger is better after all, right? 


Here is an example of building a jumbo version of one of the most simple designs I make. I think that this is way more impressive, and much more interesting than the standard sized one.


The next few days will be examples of common shapes made on the tiny scale. I made several animals out of 160's, and they all turned out nicely.


See you tomorrow.

Day 272: Chief Wahoo

I tried to make a quick and small version of my Chief Wahoo head for this guy. Normally, when I make this it's large enough to be worn over a persons head. I have some fiends that are Cleveland Indians fans, and when we catch a game I will often build something crazy to try and get on the jumbotron.


I know this is hurt a little bit by the fact that I didn't have the correct shade of blue, but I think that it turned out nice for shrinking it down.


See you tomorrow.

Day 271: Birthday Sculpture

I was digging around in my old folders and found this picture from a birthday last year.

The theme of the party was Jungle Animals, and I made a special centerpiece for the birthday girl.
It's hard to see in this picture, but she's holding a large elephant standing next to a tree with a flamingo riding on the elephant.


This was when I started looking at my balloons as a way to make little scenes instead of just stand alone balloons.


See you tomorrow.

Day 270: A Horse Of Course

I'm heading to a local renascence fair today to do some consulting, so I'm making this a quick one.

Here is a horse.

It is cute.

I like it.

These kids liked it.

Do you?

See you tomorrow.

Day 269: Gonna Need A Bigger Desk

Seeing as how it's Shark Week and all, I've been making a lot more sharks than normal, and in turn posting more sharks than ever before.

Here is a large shark I built to have suspended over the sign in desk at a local health club to advertise the fact that I'll be teaching balloon classes there next month.


I always like to drop of sculptures that will grab peoples attention at places where I've got an upcoming event, Kid's Night, or class session... it helps to get people looking out for the flyer or whatever that will be advertising when I'll be there.


See you tomorrow.

Day 268: Ribbit

I've been working on a frog catching a fly for a while now, and I think I might have finished it.

I might still need t do a little work on the fly though, I haven't been asked for many of those, so I might need to spend some time looking at what a fly is supposed to look like.

See you tomorrow.

day 267: Potter Fans

I had two young ladies come in for a quick meal before catching a showing of the last Harry Potter film. They asked me what I could make that was "Harry Pottery"


The first thing that came to mind was the brooms they rode when playing Quidditch.


These are some quick versions of witch's brooms that I put some bend in to make them look like Quidditch brooms.


See you tomorrow.

Day 266: Shark Week!

I had completely forgotten that this week was Shark Week. Last week when I made the shark for the Goofy Shark post the parents reminded me... but I forgot again. That is until my Monday Kid's Night when the shark requests began. Things slowed down towards the end of the night due to some pretty bad storms all day, and I had time to get a little crazy with this shark hat.


I was told by this guys wife that the was going up on his facebook and would soon be circulated around his work... I hope he wasn't too embarrassed.


See you tomorrow.

Day 265: Goofy Shark

I was messing around with underwater designs, and got  a request for a shark... It turned out a little goofy looking.


I kinda like the final result, it almost looks a little cartoony as apposed to my normal sharks.  I've been told by more than one twister that I should be going more for cute and cartoony, not overly detailed and trying for realism.


I can see their point, these are balloons after all.  


Only 100 days left till the challenge is over. I don't intend to kill the blog at that point though. For those of you that have been following for a while, you know I've got plans for this blog.


I'll have a showcase interview with Stretch the Balloon Dude soon, so you should be looking forward to that.




See you tomorrow.