Party Decorations » Balloon Sculpture

Under water party decorations – fish day!

admin — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:17:37 +0000

Back in Russia in old days they proclaim that once a week it has to be a “fish day” – one should eat fish only, not meat. A stupid move to hide the meat shortage.

Different age, different country, different type of fish – balloon fish! But still – fish day. Underwater party. Every table got a fish, suspended from the ceiling.

Dance floor had a big golden star fish as a back drop.

The ceiling was low, so even star fish had to be only 7’ high and rather slim to fit the space. But the hall in front of the room was tall – 2 story high. So we did columns of air bubbles coming up with a fish on top, and a 10’ anchor with chain. Toward the end of the party we took the anchor down and used as a backdrop for picture taking.

fish on babbles column

As always, you make one of something, two come to mind. We came up with more fish designes than we actually have made. It would be nice to get another party with the request of different fish for all, say, 50 tables. Now we are well equipped.

I personally think that one of the most interesting designs for a low light parties with underwater theme would be a fish with a use of blinkers. There is a fish that leaves in the deep waters, so deep that the day light never reaches there. In order to attract smaller fishes to get them, it glows in the dark. This and other type of deep see fish that glow can be one of the best decorations for the low light parties.

What else is glowing that we can use for decorations?

Trade show decorations for Sysco Foods

admin — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:32:15 +0000

Sysco Foods is a big a big company. Very big; So big that we decorated their trade shows in Virginia

Beach and another in Massachusetts.

Big companies make big trade shows and big trade show need big decorations! That is where we came

in. In Virginia Beach we dressed up most part of the convention center for the trade show, but the largest and the most interesting piece was 20’ by 20’ balloon wall with logo for this trade show. You can see the logo in the lower right corner. The trick was to keep the wall with logo “alive and well” for the 3 days of the trade show. This meant it has to be done with air, not helium, and on a frame.

Making the actual logo was a little bit of a climbing: we created a scaffold structure and one person (guess who!) was climbing up and down gluing long balloons on the wall. Hanging on with one hand as to not fall down, balloon in the other hand, glue gun between your teeth- Fun, no?

The other person was 20 yards away, looking at the original logo on paper, yelling commands “Up!”, “Down!, and so on.

I must add that it was two AM so aside from balloons and glue it there was a lot of coffee. The whole project (that is, dressing up the whole trade show) took approximately twenty-five hours of non-stop work, but we were highly rewarded: our rather spoiled and demanding customer could not be happier.

Sysco Foods, Trade Show Logo

More coming…

Balloon decorations for the music theme

admin — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 03:07:27 +0000

How are you going to decorate a music themed event? Well, you could fill the room with balloons with music notes printed on them, and put speakers in them, or something along those lines, right?

Balloon sculpture of music clef

Wrong, of course! Make something that is elegant, can be seen from anywhere in the room, and clearly says “Music!”: A very large clef sign - a selling-to-floor balloon sculpture. That’s when we decided to name our pipe bender (You make sculptures on a skeleton of pipes) “Stradivari”, since in order to make the shape of the clef, we had to bend the pipes as gently and skillfully as Stradivari would have had to work with his violins.

Thus, you get something that fills the bill to the letter: A single, elegant, object that can be seen from anywhere in the room. Nothing else could have said “Music” more, the customer was ecstatic (as usual), and, like all other customers, puzzled why he couldn’t take it home – not only was it too big to fit in the car, he wouldn’t even be able to get it out of the room!

Moral of the story: One elegant and flawless object that can be seen anywhere, is much better (and often cheaper) than the usual stereotypes. If you want, we’ll even make you something to take home!

Balloon sculpture of lighthouse for corporate event

admin — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 18:59:29 +0000

“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!

More spiders – for Halloween!

admin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:34:04 +0000

Be it your office or your street, you’re not safe! Unless you have a treat!

Balloon sculpture of Hallowing web with spiders

Spiders, spiders, spiders! Continued

admin — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 02:55:31 +0000

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…

Star for President’s day

admin — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 05:21:02 +0000

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

Balloon sculpture of a Martian – have you seen one?

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:30:43 +0000

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 of DNA

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:54:45 +0000

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!

admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:56:14 +0000

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…