Archive for October, 2012
Ice cream cone
Oct 21st
Here’s a fun food balloon. This balloon requires a few different neat techniques to make the cone itself and to attach the cherry to the ice cream. No glue was used. This is 100% balloon!
I got the idea for this balloon when I saw this ice cream cone balloon by Mishel Sabbah. However, I didn’t have any Geo Blossoms of the right color, so I made the “ice cream” part a little differently. Also, my version is smaller and I added a tulip twist to the cherry.
To make this balloon, I used five blush 160 balloons for the cone (you could also use goldenrod or brown), one white 160 and one 5″ round for the ice cream, and a small scrap of a red 160 for the cherry.
The cone is made the same way you’d make the base of the cake balloon, except you shorten the bubbles as you go to achieve the cone shape. You won’t use up the entire blush 160 balloon, and can use one of the resulting scraps to attach the cherry, and another scrap to put the entire balloon together.
I should explain how to attach the cherry in more detail in another post, but it basically requires inserting the (blown-up) cherry into the white round, tying it to the white round, pushing the cherry out of the round balloon (turning it inside-out), and then inflating the round balloon.
If you like sprinkles, you can draw some “sprinkles” with some colorful markers.
Happy Birthday Em!
Hello Kitty with flower
Oct 14th
Here’s Hello Kitty again! (See my Hello Kitty last post.) This time, I made her limbs a little shorter and gave her a flower.
Hello Kitty’s real name is actually Kitty White, and she was born in 1975 in the suburbs of London. Did you know she also has a twin sister named Mimmy, who wears her bow on the other side? Or that Hello Kitty is worth 5 billion dollars a year (as of 2010)?
This balloon isn’t too hard to make, but it requires a lot of knot tying (and more knots take more time.) I counted nine knots, plus two knots for the flower, plus a raisin twist. (Because you don’t use the entire balloon, you have to detach/cut off the unused portion of the balloon and tie a knot.) There are a few pinch twists as well, which may be a little more difficult for newer twisters. But it’s a fun one to make!
Happy Birthday Angela!
One-balloon monkey
Oct 7th
This monkey is a great one to add to your arsenal – it only requires one balloon and is a fast one to make (and cute!) I’ve blogged about another monkey I’ve made before, but that one requires multiple balloons and is a little more complicated. If you have a lot of kids to twist for, you’ll want to make one can be made quickly.
I first saw this one-balloon monkey on Michael Floyd’s web site, where he has posted a very nice video on how to make the balloon. Check it out!
Here’s a monkey I made out of a 160 balloon. To make this balloon, I inflated the balloon a little more than halfway.
Because the balloon is thinner and the monkey is smaller, there was plenty of balloon to give the monkey a three-balloon body, some small feet, and a long tail.
Balloon ball (icosahedron)
Oct 1st
Here’s a balloon ball. Sure, you could just inflate a round balloon, but this is cooler. 🙂
In mathematical terms, it’s actually an icosahedron – a polyhedron with 20 triangular sides. It may look complicated, but because of its symmetry and basic units, it’s actually quite easy to put together. I first saw this on Vi Hart’s web site, where she has posted great instructions for this icosahedron, as well as many other mathematical shapes, such as fractals, tangles, and other polyhedra! Check it out!
To make this balloon, I took three 160 balloons and cut each in half. Each section was then used to make one of the six units. (I wanted to make an icosahedron that wasn’t too big.)
If you’d like to read a mathematical paper written about balloon twisting, check out: Computational Balloon Twisting Theory: The Theory of Twisting Polyhedra, co-authored by Hart, Martin Dermaine, and Erik Dermaine (who was one of my college professors!)