“Balloons are for kids, for children parties only.” “You can not decorate serious events with balloons.” Well, if you tie one red balloon to each chair and a dozen to the handle of the door – yes, this is correct, you’d better not show it as a sample of a well decorated corporate event.
But! If you design decorations OUT OF BALLOONS, if you use this best decoration media (fast to install, easy to decorate huge spaces, almost no time to dismantle, more color and reflective surface, …, never mind the relative cost!) properly, YOU WIN!
Here is a horror story, that turned out to be a success beyond all expectations:
A few years ago a large convention was planning a party for its attendees - several hundred people. The theme – clam bake on the beach. They rented a room to house the party of this size and hired a decoration company to fulfill the theme. The decoration company charged them a few thousand dollars and half a day later declared bankruptcy. As far as the convention goes - no decorations and no budget.
That is when WOW! Balloons, Inc got on the stage: almost crying , the convention representative was directed to me by the kind room owners. We have decorated for them before. So, here was the deal: the party is next week. The budget, or rather what’s left of it is not nearly enough to try another decoration company. But, as I mentioned before, balloons are the perfect media, what is not enough for conventional decoration was enough for a 25-foot lighthouse with real light on top!
Yes, that is right: the larger the space to be dressed up, the larger the decorations needed. And balloon sculpture is definitely the best way to go!
Tags: Balloon Sculpture, big balloon sculpture, decoration tips, themed party
Just a quick thought: many times balloons are needed when you want to suspend something from the ceiling, but the ceiling is too high or can not be touched. The something can be a star, a flat shape or a mylar balloon, a flag of some sort, or a mylar shape (guitar? butterfly? dice?) – just as long as it is liftable. If you look in the previous posts, you can see some examples (there are more to come!).
One thing that I want to have in mid-air at a party is a balloon with the light inside. I am going to try to take a picture of it and place it here. Would that I knew about photography as much as I know about balloon decoration! – it would be a wonderful picture…
Be it your office or your street, you’re not safe! Unless you have a treat!
Balloon sculpture of Hallowing web with spiders
Tags: Balloon Sculpture
As promised, more of the same party. Balloon sculpture of spiders on a web. As I said, it was a birthday…
Balloon sculpture of a small spider
Balloon sculpture of a big web with small spiders
What about Halloween? - It’s coming…
Tags: Balloon Sculpture, general party decorations, themed party
Some people fear them, some do not care, some love them. We do! As well as some of our customers. Sometimes at Halloween parties, sometimes not. One of our very young customers asked for a spider party for his 9th birthday! Some people say – strange, but all the kids that came to the party after school loved the big one and used small ones as toys, something to fight with and for…
More pictures are coming tomorrow!
President’s day sale at a dealership in Boston area. Balloon decorations to cheer up customers. “what would you like?” – “Well, arches”. How many times have I heard it? Planty…
Coming to see the space to work with. Beautiful 2 story high ceiling, huge room. Nice balcony right across from the door. And, even though it is a dealership, most visual space is empty: from the tops of the model cars to the 30’ ceiling there is nothing catching the eye. Yes, balloon decorations will do the job. Arches are great, say at the door or above the car, but in the space we can do better than that. A big balloon sculpture would do the job. Star seems to be a natural choice for the president’s day, colors – no surprise – red, white and blue. If not, I would choose brighter colors (less white another words) in this light wall and white color room. For the sculpture the other choice for the customer was heart (it is Valentine time and they love their customers!). The last choice was dinosaurs – to make the TV and news people come…
As you see, the star had won.
An interesting thing: they wanted us to work during the day, so people were coming to see cars on sale. They did not! They looked at our team dressing up the star and putting it up!
See our balloon sculpture page
Tags: Balloon Sculpture, booth decorations, trade show, whole story
In the post about the balloon sculpture of orange dino, I mentioned that it began to lay golden eggs. This was the first one.
The Bryn Mawr School for girls is located near the one were the dinosaur was made. The principles had lunch together and the dino story was shared. So people from Bryn Mawr called me for decorations for a game on their field. What can be done on the side of a football field so that people would notice it?
Well, the team in the school was called the Martians, so that was an idea (needless to say that the first thing the people from the school said was “balloon arch”). I do not know about you, but I had never seen a martian in my life, so I have no idea how they look. The only thing that was a must was the color green – the school color. Green looks like the right color for Martians ( just sounds natural for them), but not very practical – the background for the balloon sculpture were green trees. But the school insisted.
I asked everybody I knew about the Martians. Yes, there were strange looks all right, but at some point someone said “sure!” and drew me a picture of a Martian on a napkin. It was exactly what I was looking for! I sat down with a ruler and pencil and measured the proportions carefully. And here you go – he is 30 feet tall and looks exactly the same! (Easy for me to say – where is that napkin?)
As I said, it was standing on the side of a football field, far away from any building, but the electricity for my compressor was available – they said… But what is enough to power a scoreboard is not for a commercial size compressor! No, I will not claim that we have blown the whole balloon sculpture by mouth (wait another 20 years and I will). We called back to our store and asked for the tiny machine we used to blow up balloons before. I am very proud we have finished on time – it took 4 times longer than we had planned. But we did it and it is not “it” anymore! We love him!
balloon sculpture DNA
Clark University had a grand opening of another biology building.
This had a very unusual beginning: we were recommended by competitor-friend. They offer the same service, but on the “balloon bouquet” side only. So, when Clark University asked for something fancy, they gave our telephone number. And here I was in the new biology building. “What can you do for us?” We have done a very complicated molecule for a chemist convention once, but this called for something new. What? “Can you do a DNA? In the atrium” – as always, the answer was – “YES”!
So I was introduced to a professor who printed out several DNA models for me and gave all explanations. “Back to school” – a pleasant feelings…
It is one thing to try a balloon sculpture of Dino, it is anther to try a 3 story high DNA. I did not (and I do not) have a place that is high enough to try out things like that… So, for every minute of execution I spend 10 in planning. The scary factor was that as the balloon sculpture is being built, it goes up and the next part is added from below. If anything is wrong – I can’t jump and fix it, I can’t lower the whole thing down and get lower parts to get tangled – it would take a lifetime to get it back. So everything has to work perfectly fine the first time around. Fortunately (I would like to say “as usual”, but I am too modest! ) it worked. With a lot of planning and a little bit of experimentation at the beginning the structure turned out to be what you see on the picture.
When we were done, the professor came by and I asked if everything is correct (after all, it is his stuff!). He looked at it for a second closely and I felt like a student handing in the homework again. “Well, everything is correct” he said (A? A+?).
Others were a little more exited. Again, as it happened a lot of times, they ordered decorations for the festivities for that day only; they kept the balloon sculpture for a week.
Balloon sculpture vs. balloon arch!
The beginning was pretty usual: “we need an arch for the first day of classes in our school”. Somehow everybody (well, almost everybody) knows about arches and thinks this is the only way to go! Well, I came to school to see where the arch should be – the space between two buildings – not a good spot. But! There was a beautiful lawn right across. The principle was nice enough – so when I looked at the lawn and suggested to do “something else “, asked “like what?”. Usually they say: “It’s ok, can we have a nice arch here please?”
I have done quite a few arches in my life, but not a single dinosaur (actually, there are a few other things I want to do before I die), so I sad “a dinosaur”. His eyes lit up, he asked to see something like that. “Something” lived only in my head, to come to existence someone has to order it first – you need two to tango! When was the last time you needed an orange balloon dinosaur 20’ high, 30’ long? Yes, this is why I did not have the picture. I found a picture of the balloon sculpture much smaller one in my Idea book (cut outs from professional magazines). Not what I had in mind at all, but better than nothing.
And the principle said “yes”! Well, as I said, I had never done one before. First, I got a book with a good picture and measured the thing carefully. Then we went to a place with a very high ceilings (if you do not have a friend with a very large room – you are dead in this business!) and built one up completely. It took the whole day. One problem: it was inside. No wind, no kids trying to get on it and so on. A balloon sculpture of the life-size dino is like a sail on a boat. Even a little wind can bend it, as serious one can make it fly. So it took some additional work to make it hurricane-proof.
Then the big night came and in the morning the dino was born! It had as much metal in it as rubber, the neck was anchored to the tree behind, the neck pipe was hammered 4 feet deep into the ground and you could drive a tank through – it would not move! But we still call it a balloon sculpture…
Then the rewards began coming in. The first one was the principle himself. He lost his gift of speech when he was jogging by at 6 am. He said “Mikhail, it’s great!” about 20 times in a row… Then kids and parents started showing up… If anything can be a reward, that definitely was! Then, to top all of that, an 80 years old gentleman from the house behind the lawn came to see the dino close up. He lived on the second floor. When he woke up that morning and opened the window – he discovered a head of the dino up above and was slightly shocked… But he was strong and survived it.
Then the dino began to lay golden eggs: the two neighboring schools placed the orders within a week or two: the principle worked as my salesman much harder than I ever did! Than is how the balloon sculpture of Martian came to being. That story is coming…
Page on our site with this and other balloon sculptures: http://www.wowballoons.com/balloon_sculptures.html
One thing though: they will lay on the table along with the food. Sometimes, caterers place so many dishes on the table and the food is so decorative as well as abundant, that the bases are lost. In fact, the smaller the base, the simpler it is for your catering service and the less it will get in the way of the visitors.
Therefore, whenever you intend to spend money on the bottoms of balloon arrangements or different table decorations – think about dishes, bottles and other things competing for the space.
7. Balloon ceiling (the ceiling covered with balloons with hanging ribbons)
Factors to bear in mind:
a) When the ceiling is a rough area, numerous balloons might pop during the inflation process, and a lot more throughout the celebration, unless the ceiling is covered completely and balloons do not move.
c) 1 balloon takes up a bit less than a sq ft. Thus, when you’re in a big space, you’ll need a considerable spending budget to pay for the ceiling totally covered. If it is – fine, but I would consider the other options in the same price range as well. If you’re only covering the ceiling partly, an A/C or fan may blow the balloons about and will rub all of them against the ceiling. If that is the case and the ceiling surface is rough, a sizable part of balloons will pop.
For more complete discussion of ceiling decorations please read ”Balloon decorations for the ceiling”
8. Balloon Drops
An ideal place for that is a theater-type space. That is to say, a space having a very high ceiling and a relatively small floor area. On their way down balloons “have time” to go sideways and cover everything within the room.
Inside a regular-sized space we will be fortunate if we manage to cover the dance floor. Also (although it’s a matter of individual judgment) the dangling web filled with balloons does not help at all in terms of decorations, in addition to telling everybody what’s coming. And, even worse, if a person isn’t looking at the net with balloons the second when the balloons are dropped, he could miss the entire thing – it takes a second for the balloon to get to the floor!
A remedy to all these difficulties is the so-called “explosive balloon”, also called a “popping balloon”.
Stay calm! There aren’t any actual explosive used! Just about all it is a big (3-foot or even bigger) balloon, full of small balloons or even occasionally confetti or lotto wins. One or more of these balloons is placed on the ceiling so when the right time arrives, they’ll all “explode” at the press of button.
You could disperse all these explosive balloons all around the ceiling if you wish to include everyone, or just use a few at a good place, should you wish. Forget about large dangling netting and nobody ever guesses what will happen!
Also, it’s really worth mentioning that you can place these ‘explosive’ balloons with each other to create a wall and blow up the whole wall… We’ll discuss this the next time!
Tags: balloon centerpieces, explosive balloons, general party decorations, popping balloons
