Day 184: Balloonatic Podcast Balloon Ball

Here is the first of several balloon instructional videos.

This is my version of a balloon ball. I think this is much better than just blowing up a round balloon and handing it to someone. (which is what I used to do when I was younger and less experienced.)

Here is the video for how to make this balloon design. You can find it on Youtube, and it will be up on iTunes, Zune, Blip.tv and other sites soon.

See you tomorrow

There will be an update!

Oh how there will be updating!


Blogger was down for the lase several days for maintenance. You could get on to read the site, but the had locked the account stuff so I wasn't able to do any updates.


I know I'm behind by about a week, but I'm good for it.


I have a busy weekend. 2 shows Saturday, and then I'm building centerpieces for the big AMAS banquet show.


For those of you not from the area, the AMAS banquet show is the yearly magic banquet that the Akron Magical Arts Society puts on in the summer. This year our headliner is Michael Finney, which is awesome. This year I won't be performing, but I will be building some kick butt magic themed centerpieces.


The article about me in the Akron Beacon Journal should be running on Sunday... so I'm hoping that will point some more traffic to the blog.


I will be making a big update on Monday or Tuesday to make up for all the lost time, and it will have a bunch of larger and more advanced designs in it.


To hold you over, I've posted a few more instructional videos on Youtube. I haven't uploaded them to iTunes or Zune or any of the other sites yet... but they will find their way there soon enough.


Here is a video update about things I've got planned.
http://youtu.be/5KRJHVjrYMc




Here are instructions for how to make a balloon ball.
http://youtu.be/etw9bl3eYrI


And here is a video for a simple version of a balloon DRAGON!
http://youtu.be/W5X8RUX7Dhg




I'll make posts for each of these later with a picture of the balloon and the video embedded in the page.


I'll be back in a few days.

Day 183: Head In The Sand

Try to overlook the looming shadow of the balloon guy taking the picture.


One of the things I've been working on is making animals that are larger than the normal balloon animal. I've found that when you scale up the size of the animals it is not only more impressive for the person you're making it for, but you also have the opportunity to add a lot more detail and character. 
The ostrich isn't a shape that would have looked right being made with with 350's, so I made it all  out of 260's. 


See you tomorrow.

Day 182: Backpack

Here is a simple design for a balloon backpack. Of course you can't hold anything in it, but it can be worn by the child.


I had a heck of a time finding a place I could set it up so you could see the shape, I had to wedge it into my balloon bag.


See you tomorrow.

Day 181: Toucan... and A NEW CONTEST!

A few weeks back I made a post about how my latest minion was a big fan of his balloon toucan design.
I was asked to show my own toucan design... and I finally had the time to make one at one of my restaurants.


I decided to make a little scene with this one, building a branch for the toucan to perch on. The restaurant I built it at is called Doogan's, it's a family Irish pub sort of a place. One of their slogans is "How you Doogan?" so I thought I'd make a little word bubble for the toucan to speak.


This is a smaller version of the toucan, I made it out of 260's instead of the 350's I usually use. Now that I see the size of everything, I don't think it would have looked too big for the branch like I had worried. I'll make it a bit bigger next time.


An anonymous commenter made a suggestion that I like quite a bit, so I'm going to try out having a weekly contest.


I'm going to call it "Balloon Of The Week" for now... (until I think up a name with a pun or something)
Those of you that are readers and also happen to be balloon twisters, I want you to send me designs you've been working on, or pictures of balloons you're really proud of making. 
If you don't want to send in your own stuff, then please point me in the direction of other twisters you'd like me to showcase. I'll pick one design or twister each Friday and make a post about them. If I can I'll try to contact them ahead of time to get a quote or comment. I will only post images of designs that are sent in from the person that made it. I want to make sure that people are getting the credit for their work.
If the designer wants, and provides me with the information, I'll happily include a link to their website, twitter, facebook, or whatever. Hopefully I can help to drive some traffic to you guys. 


I'm looking forward to seeing the submissions.


See you tomorrow.

Day 180: Creepy Face

Super creepy, right?


I was goofing around at the end of the night at one of my Kid's Nights and decided I wanted to try to scale down the really detailed face design.


I like this design because you can recreate very close versions of people is you know the tricks to get the different shapes out of the balloons. It's much easier when using the larger balloons like the 640's and 350's... much harder when it's 260's and 160's.  The design is still clearly a face, and it's very detailed.... it's just rather creepy.

I know the shape of the eyes is a big part of the creepy factor, and that can be changed easily enough. I decided to embrace the creepy though and make it a large headed little guy on a tiny body.




Here is the bartender at the restaurant... I made an attempt to make this guy into a creepy little leprechaun since that is the mascot of the restaurant... I think all he needed was a little hat and it would have been perfect.  I'll likely be making more versions of this character as Halloween decorations.


He just needs the murderous look in his eye because someone has taken his pot o' gold.




See you tomorrow.

Day 179: Just Because

While digging in my archives trying to salvage the pictures lost when my laptop ate my balloons folder I found this picture that for some reason I didn't post back when I had the professional pictures taken.


This is a quick and simple 3 rose gift design I make, the stand is made from a Geo Blossom balloon.


See you tomorrow.