A Balloon Wall backdrop perfect for Christmas!

Balloon Walls make the perfect backdrop! Great for entrance decor, window displays and as a photo opportunity at events! The great thing about balloon walls is that they can be made to any size subject to the size of balloons and inflation size that you decide to work with!

You may have already secured your Christmas decor designs with your clients, but maybe you are still looking for inspiration?










Earlier this year I attended JBAN, and taught a Christmas decor class, where I showed a number of different designs including how to create balloons walls featuring a 'Santa Face'.



I showed the same design but in two different styles of wall, which I thought would highlight the differences in the two different techniques.

Design 1 - Santa Face using Duplet Square Pack wall technique.

The Duplet Square pack allows us to create a wall that has a flat surface, straight sides, very good definition of pattern on straight and diagonal lines. This type of wall can be made with a double sided pattern or a plain back (the double sided pattern could be a challenge, I would love to attempt this one day)!

Once upon a time, I would create my balloon wall designs on my computer, and it would take quite some time to make, now I use the wonderful Ken Stillman's  balloon tools software and my design time has been reduced significantly. You can use Ken's amazing software for free to try it out, you can purchase the software if you feel that it is something that you will use on a regular basis - it's not expensive and you will recoup your cost after one use, or you can make a donation.

The wall that I designed is made up of 9 columns, each column uses 68 balloons, in total this wall uses 612 balloons, however you can only view 306 of the balloons, which is why you can create a whole different pattern on the other side of the wall. Once you 'break' the design it is so easy to so each of the columns that you need to create to build the wall!

I wrote a blog on January 30th 2012 - Balloon Walls Part 1 that will give you more information regarding this technique, it also includes a short DVD clip demonstrating the technique.

Here is a direct link to this blog: http://theverybestballoonblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/balloon-walls-part-1.html

So here it is, it looks exactly as the design created on the software, so you can be guaranteed great results every time! We suspended this wall by running a length of aluminium rod through the top to keep it strong as the wall was made from 5" balloons.

Design 2 - Santa Face using Alternate Size Square Pack

Here is fundamentally the same Santa design but using a different technique.

Unfortunately I am unaware if there is any easy to use software available to create walls using this method therefore I have resorted to using my own ‘homemade’ online balloon graph paper.

The Characteristic of this type of balloon wall are:

• Flat Surface
• Flat top and sides
• Good diagonal & horizontal lines
• Greater detail can be shown in this wall type
• This wall is strong and robust, stronger than the Duplet Square pack shown above.

This wall is made up of 11 columns and each column uses 80 balloons, therefore this wall uses 880 balloons in total. This wall allows greater detail than the duplet square pack as you can see more surface balloon. As you can see from the picture at the start of this blog that I used 11" balloons on this occasion, creating a pretty big wall, which would be perfect at a backdrop!

If you are unsure how to create a wall using this technique just check out my blog from February 2012

http://theverybestballoonblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/balloon-walls-part-2.html

I love making balloon walls, from the design process through to construction, and once it's built a huge sense of pride!

As I write this blog, Janine Crispin of T-Shirt Printing & More in Bristol, UK posted a balloon wall design on the QBN Facebook Group that can be created with the new Qualatex Quick Link balloons. I asked Janine if she would be happy to share this design, and she agreed!

Quick Link Balloon Wall design by Janine Crispin, T-Shirt Printing & More

Again, this design is very similar to my original design, but I imagine that making it with Quick Links would be much much quicker, and uses less balloons, therefore a great alternative if the client budget cannot be stretched to much! 

There were a number of great comments on Janine's post which I thought I would also share:
Linda Kiss suggested that the design could be part 3-D, to make the pom pom on his hat half a topiary ball and maybe his nose too? I am sure that it would look great with some 3-D elements.
Janine created the design using Coral Draw, but if you check out Ken Stillman's balloon tools, he also has great software for linking balloons.

An essential tool for making balloon walls is a Precision Air Inflator, without this piece of equipment I think that it would be pretty impossible to make it in a realistic and commercial time.

I hope that your Christmas campaign is progressing well and that bookings are coming in... I am happy to report that I have a few very nice bookings for Christmas confirmed so far!

Finally, a huge thank you to Tamami Ono who helped me to prepare all the balloons for the balloon walls, along with Luc's lovely translator (who's name escapes me, but I am hoping to 'find' it) and a Precision Air Inflator! And a final thank you to Janine for my last minute addition to this blog and for sharing her great Quick Link balloon wall design!

Happy Ballooning!

Sue

www.suebowler.com