Building the Titanic... an incredible project!

2012 is a year filled with landmark celebrations and events such as The London Olympics and Paralympics, the Queens Diamond Jubilee and the 100th Anniversary of the Titanic! 

This is a year when many of us can take advantage of these celebrations and offer exciting and unique decor...

I am very excited, I have been asked to be part of the team that will rebuild the Titanic... but this time totally out of balloons, approx. 14,000 give or take a few!

Fiona Fisher CBA

Fiona Fisher CBA of Worldwide Balloon Decor with her husband and business partner Rodney were approached 4 months ago by Victoria Square, shopping centre, Belfast, Ireland, to create a balloon sculpture of the iconic ship TITANIC! Just a few hundred yards away from Victoria Square is the slipway where the Titanic was originally built and launched from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in 1911. The Titanic's first maiden voyage was on the 10th April 1912 and then tragically sank only 5 days later on the 15th April 1912!

Fiona said "I am really looking forward to the challenge of building the Titanic in Victoria Square, Belfast, as it's so close to where Titanic was originally built.
 All of my projects have to be thoroughly researched, but there is a special pride in this one. Now that I have discovered the amazing skills of the people who built Titanic, I dedicate this project, as a tribute to them, the great ship building empire that we once had in Northern Ireland and to all those who lost their lives on the fate-full maiden voyage. When the public see our scaled down model of Titanic and study all of the background information in Victoria Square, I think a lot of them will be surprised as to how enormous this magnificent ship really was".

Rodney Fisher

The frame will be built in Portadown during March and transported to Victoria Square on the 1st of April, ready for the balloons to be added by the rest of the team... that's me and John (I think they call it a busman's holiday)!!

Rodney is really pleased to be involved in this particular project as Titanic has a special place in history, not just in Northern Ireland but in many countries around the world.

"I know that lots of people from all around the globe will be watching our progress and I hope we can give them an insight into how we go about creating a balloon sculpture of this scale and size".

So what does it take to create such an awesome balloon sculpture? As with all sculptures that Fiona and Rodney build, a great deal of research as taken place. Rodney studied the fabulous book "Titanic the ship magnificent" and spent a significant time doing further research on the internet.

 "We can only use round balloons (Qualatex of course) to build the sculpture. Victoria Square is open on three sides and can have strong winds blowing through plus a large temperature fluctuations at this time of year".

Fiona & Rodney work extremely well as a team, Rodney designs the frames and Fiona works out how she wants the sculpture to look with the balloons added... sometimes an initial idea on how it will all fit together just doesn't work, so they allow plenty of time to play around with ideas so that they get as close as possible to the end result.

Rodney has kindly shared some of his working plans, I am in awe of the amount of pre-planning and designing that has already taken place!

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I will keep my blog up-to-date with progress on this project, and I will also give a day by day report when we are working on the project in April... along with many many photo's!

If you would like to read more about this amazing balloon project visit www.buildingtitanic.com

Do you have any exciting projects in the planning stages for 2012 that you would like to share within the balloon community... we would love to hear!

I will be looking at the other 2012 MILESTONE celebrations and share some of my ideas with you over the next few months!

Sue