Part 1 Fabulous Balloon Walls - Created with Latex Round Balloons

There are many different ways to create walls with balloons. We can use latex rounds, QuickLinks, non-rounds and foil balloons such as Qualatex Starpoints, and others too! So, we need to determine which type of wall we want to create, or more importantly, which wall best suits our or our customers needs?

So why are we proposing a balloon wall to our clients - a client would generally never ask you for a balloon wall unless they have seen something specific on Instagram or Pinterest! It is your job to sell what a wall can do for them - sell the emotion and not the product! To give you an idea of what I mean by selling the emotion here are a few examples.

• Suction power doesn’t sell vacuum cleaners; seeing the dirt it gathers does.
• Ingredients don’t sell expensive face creams; the confidence they give you does.
• And carbon footprint stats don’t sell electric cars; pride in eco-friendliness does.

Here are a few reasons why you might suggest a balloon wall to a client:

• To create their corporate logo
• To create a theme background
• To create a theme entrance
• To create a photo or stage back-drop
• To enhance a trade show or exhibition stand

I love designing and making balloon walls, and will always propose them to a client whenever possible. I have a client that now always insists that they have a balloon wall photo backdrop at all of their events! 

There are a number of different techniques that we can use to make balloon walls using latex round balloons:

• Duplet Square Pack
• Alternate Size Square Garland Pack
• Traditional 4-Balloon Garland Pack
• Organic

Duplet Square Pack

This is one of my favourite techniques. I really like that balloon walls made with this technique have a flat, smooth surface (not bumpy like balloons), straight sides, and really good definition on straight and diagonal lines. This type of wall can be made with a double-sided pattern or with a plain back; however keep in mind it is not as robust as other wall techniques.

Here are a few examples of décor using the Duplet Square-Pack Technique.

Elegant Tropical Balloon Wall and Organic Garland design by Sue Bowler, CBA

Baby 1st Birthday Balloon Wall Backdrop
Design by Sue Bowler

Zoe Adam-Jones, CBA of Jaz Trading, designed and made this
fabulous backdrop using the Duplet Square Pack Balloon technique
at the 2019 Qualatex Event in Brazil.

Watch as Chris Adamo, CBA, demonstrates the duplet square pack wall method for his mountain scene design. For more information and tips check out the great article in Balloon Images Issue 2

Alternate Size Square Pack Garland

When making balloon walls using this technique, you can guarantee that it will be robust and will always looks good! It is probably the most widely used method of precision wall. It is made by alternating clusters of four balloons in two different sizes packed on to 50lb Dacron line. This produces a square shape garland.

Alternate Clusters of four balloons in two different sizes

The garlands when built are laid side by side and interlocked, then joined together 

The difference in size between the two sets is relative to the size of balloon used.

2" - 4½" = use a ½" differential

4½" - 7½" = use a 1" differential

7½" - 11" = use a 2" differential

5cm - 11.5cm = use a 1.5cm differential

11.5cm - 19cm = 2.5cm differential

19cm - 28cm = 5cm differential

Practice to see which sizes work best for you. The garlands once built are placed side -by-side and interlocked, then connected together.

This method produces quite a smooth design with a flat surface, it allows for good diagonal lines and triangles. However, not all balloon wall types work with different patterns!

Here are some examples of balloon walls using the Alternate Size Square Garland method:

Chrome Silver & Gold with Black - Alternate Size Square Pack Balloon Wall
Design by Sue Bowler

Check out Chris Adamo's demonstration where he shows the alternate square pack method to create an ice cream truck photo op.

Ice-Cream Truck Photo Op by Chris Adamo, CBA,
of The Balloon Crew, Sydney, Australia

Ice-Cream Truck by Chris Adamo

Consistent sizing of balloons is paramount with balloon walls! Some methods are not very forgiving of badly sized balloons or inconsistent  'dupleting'  of balloons. To form the duplets, we must make sure that the balloons are tied as tightly together as possible, leaving no slack latex between the knot and the inflated part of the balloon.

Everyone will pack clusters on to line at a particular tension. It is usual to have only one person pack the garlands while others inflate and tie. This is not possible on large jobs, so you will need to practice consistent sizing and packing with your crew. 

Organic Balloon Walls

It would appear that there are many different techniques used to create Organic Style Balloon Walls. I suppose this is not surprising, as there are equally many different techniques to create Organic Garlands. I personally have used two different methods, and I will share one of the techniques that I used. We will look at other methods in Part 2.

I was contacted by a brand development agency who asked me to create a balloon and flower wall for a press event in London. 

When building a wall like this, it is important to consider how stable it needs to be. The balloon themselves are not heavy, but when you load it with lots of faux flowers, the weight increases considerably. So my first consideration was how was I going to support my balloon wall?

Thinking about what would work best, I came up with the idea of using a wire grid frame. My next task was to find a grid frame that would be suitable. After a little research, I found the perfect solution!

One of the client's criteria was that the balloons needed to be pastel tones to suit the faux flowers that they were supplying for the wall. 

Organic Balloon & Flower Wall by Sue Bowler

I loved making this wall and learned a great deal whilst building it. I was really happy with the end result, as was the client. This wall took around eight hours to build, including the construction time to build the panels. 

A huge thank you to Chris Adamo and Zoe Adam-Jones for sharing their knowledge and inspiration! 

In Part 2 of this Balloon Wall blog post, we will look at a fabulous collection of Balloon Walls made from QuickLinks™️.

Happy Ballooning! 

Sue

www.suebowler.com

Follow me @suebowler

 

Balloon Walls Part 1

How to make a Duplet Square Pack Wall.

Since posting the Clown balloon wall that I taught at the Balloonland Event, Israel, January 2012, I have had many requests asking how it was made. So here is the first of 2 blogs showing 2 different wall techniques, with a little introduction to balloon walls. 

Clown Balloon Wall created by delegates at Balloonland Israel January 2012

 

There are many different ways to create walls with balloons! We can use latex rounds, non-rounds and foil balloons such as Qualatex Starpoints and others too! So, we need to determine which type of wall we want to create or more importantly, which wall best suits our or our customers needs?

So why are we proposing a balloon wall to our clients... a client will never ask you for a wall, it is your job to sell what it can do for them... sell the emotion and not the product!

• To create their corporate logo?
• To create a theme background?
• To create a theme entrance?
• To create a photo or stage back-drop?
• To enhance a trade show or exhibition stand?

Balloon wall techniques using latex round balloons:

• Duplet Square Pack
• Alternate Size Square Garland Pack
• Traditional 4-Balloon Garland Pack

There have been a few people during my career as a Balloon Artist who have inspired me to create balloon walls, Ian Herd CBA and Bruce Walden CBA.

Bruce Walden created this Balloon Wall Mural Paper, and this proved to be very important to me when I first started to design walls, without this, it was extremely difficult to determine which type of wall best suited the design or logo that I wanted to build within the wall. Today, I have created my own 'Mural Paper' on my computer, which saves me a great deal of time when creating a design!

As there are a number of different techniques, I am going to focus on each one separately, today we are going to look at how to create a DUPLET SQUARE PACK WALL.

Duplet Square Pack Wall 

 Characteristics:

Flat Surface
Straight Sides
Good definition on straight lines & Diagonal lines
Wall can be made with a double sided pattern or with a plain back.
Not as robust as other wall techniques.

The Mardi Gras wall above is an example of a wall that has been made using the Duplet Square Pack technique. It features with Step-by-Step instructions in the Master Series DVD available from Qualatex distributors.

Here is another example this time with a logo built into the BAPIA logo built into the wall.

Regardless of which technique you use there are a few simple rules when making a wall:

• The balloons MUST be inflated with precision, every balloon must be accurately sized!

• I will only make garlands/ Columns/ walls using Dacron line and not monofilament. Dacron is strong, yet soft against the balloons, it will not stretch when under tension.

Wall Construction - How to fix the columns together.

This is such an important part of the wall construction, if done badly the wall can distort and not look good. The following technique was taught to me by Ian Herd, there are many people who use 260Q to fix a wall together, but for me the elastic band and paperclip method is the best technique!

Project

I recently designed a wall for a class that I taught at the Balloonland Event in Israel, I knew that it was a pretty complex design and a great challenge for the class!

First I needed to get my inspiration. I knew that I wanted to create a wall with a clown face. To help me with my design I found a clown face Cross Stitch pattern on the internet! This design is far too detailed for my wall, but I liked the shape and features, so I down scaled the design to work for me.

Cross Stitch Pattern

My version of the Clown Face

Here is my interpretation of the Happy Clown design featured above. Once I have created the design that I want to make on the mural paper, I now break the wall down into columns, this makes it much easier when building each of the columns.

Now I can easily see the balloons required for each of the columns! Looking at the columns above you can see 18 columns, each column has 44 duplets - 88 balloons per column! This whole wall uses 1584 balloons!

Black - 1086
Orange - 114
Blush - 189
Yellow - 22
Lime - 48
Rose - 8
Robin's Egg Blue - 40
Purple Violet - 8
Blue - 8
White - 44
Red - 17


If you count the balloons that you can see, you will only count 792 balloons, this is because every balloon you see has one behind it! To make this wall easier, we used Black balloons as the back balloon.

This picture shows balloons being counted out to make the columns.

This  shows how important it is to 'read' the pattern as you go!

This shows the columns being linked together with the elastic bands and paper clips

The Clown wall that we made was not perfect, it was a group exercise with 20 people working on it. When you work on your walls, I recommend that if possible only 1 person packs the balloons on to the Dacron line, everyone has their own tension, varying tensions will effect the overall look of the finished wall...

Example of Technique

Here is a small project that I have put together to help explain the technique with a short DVD. You might find it useful if you right click on the design and print it off whilst you watch the DVD so that you can follow the pattern as I make it, I think that you may find it easier to understand it a little easier.

 

I hope that you have found this blog useful? There are many different walls to create walls and other techniques for creating a Duplet Square Pack wall. I always recommend that you use the technique that suits you best.
Start with a simple project to learn and perfect the technique before you embark on a large scale project for a customer.

Good luck!

Sue