Sue Bowler: The Balloon Expert

Smile Face A smile may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes, it seems as though its value is so much more. A simple smile creates its own message without words. In many cases, the smile takes on a specific meaning because of the surroundings or situation in which it occurs. A quote from  My Well-Being Presented by Humana   Smile Face is probably one of the happiest and most versatile balloons that were ever made. It's certainly one of my favourites. I have been using it and its variations in my designs for many years! There are many occasions that it could be used for; Feel Better soon   Thinking of You Let's Celebrate Happy Birthday To Cheer You New Baby Christening or Communion   And I am sure that there are more occasions that you can think of too! At Qualatex ® , we have such a fabulous range of Smile Face balloons to choose from, making it so easy for us to create fun, unique, exciting and of course sel...

Stylised Shoots have become a very popular trend over the past few years. They are great for showing off your style and creative ideas.  Not only are they great for marketing your business, but they are also a great way to network with venues. Often a venue will give you very good rates on a room hire if you book the room on a day when it is rarely uses, or if you offer to give them free use of your photographs to promote their venue… there are always deals to be struck!  Stylised shoots are your chance to create that beautiful event you have only ever dreamed of decorating. Make sure you hire a good photographer for the day or if you're on a very tight budget, find a group of local  amateur  photographers who would be willing to take photographs to gain experience and add to their portfolios! Elegant tulle covered 3' latex balloon with vintage flowers Balloon by Jacqui Young Class Touch Balloons, Wishaw, Scotland The stunning 3' balloon featured in ...

H aving great photos in our portfolios, websites, and our social media business pages can truly make a difference when it comes to promoting our company and more importantly the services that we offer! Photo courtesy of Pioneer Europe Ltd. Our portfolio makes up a big part of our company image, the type of balloon business that we are, and the type of balloon work we undertake. Let's be honest, when someone is searching the internet for a company to do a job for them, they only have the photographs on a website to grab their attention. Those photographs could ultimately lead to a fantastic ballooning opportunity! Many years ago when I first started out, I made the huge mistake of filling my portfolio with as many photographs as I could, mostly showing the same decor but in different locations and in different colours! In those days (I am showing my age now), we did not have digital cameras or home computers and the quality of my photographs were very poor.  Today, we...

H ow many times do you take a photograph of a design or of decor that you have made hoping to use it in your portfolio or on your website and are really disappointed with how it looks in the picture? I suppose the first thing we need to look at is the camera we use. I use a little compact camera, as it's so easy for me to travel with. The great thing about my little camera is that I can set it to take pictures up to 10 MEGA Pixels, giving me high resolution photos. Personally, I have not had any success using my smart phone or tablet to take decent quality photographs. Don't get me wrong, they are great for taking snaps, but when your photo represents the work that you do, maybe it's worth getting a better quality photograph? Even with a great camera we don't always get the perfect photograph. Maybe the background is not great or the lighting is too dark? So how can we make our photographs look more professional? Here is a photograph of a design that I made earl...

C hristmas already! To be honest, early planning and preparation can only help your seasonal campaign. Having design ideas that you can propose to your clients is essential. Last year I was asked to make Christmas Trees as part of the decor that I was making for a corporate Christmas party that I was decorating.  I wanted to make something a little different from the norm and so I did a little research to see what ideas I could glean from the internet!  My trees needed to be approx. 2m (6' 6") in height although they did not all need to be exactly the same. They needed to be robust and moveable to enable us to move them into position prior to the party. I also wanted to be able to add some shimmering tinsel and Christmas tree lights to bring my trees to life! After looking at many different ideas, there was just one design that really stood out for me and that was a Quick-Link Christmas Tree made by one of my lovely ballooning friends Sean O'Kelly from...