FAN-tastic Balloon Decor - Perfect for New Year's Celebrations and Elegant Black-Tie Affairs!

I don't know about you, but I am a little bit in love with gorgeous decorative paper fans! They easily add an incredible visual texture and a touch of elegance to your balloon decor.






With New Year's Eve not too far away, you might be looking for a little "FANcifal" inspiration! So, I have selected a few design ideas that you could present to your clients.

Balloon walls are always an exciting addition to any party. They make a fabulous dramatic backdrop that can be used as entrance, stage decor, or as a superb photo opportunity! 

The balloon wall above was created with Onyx Black Qualatex^® 12" QuickLink™️ balloons inflated to 9" using the Grid technique. The gaps are filled with a selection of  7" & 11" Chrome balloons, 11" plain & prints and Microfoil^® balloons as shown below. The addition of the stars and the Happy New Year foils to the wall adds another level of depth and dimension.

18" "New Year Black & Gold Fans" Microfoil Balloon
20" "Glittergraphic" Silver & Gold Stars
11" "Star Patterns" Onyx Black & White with Gold print
11" Chrome Gold & Chrome Silver

Below is another balloon wall that I recently made for a client's "Great Gatsby" theme party. Using the same Grid technique, this time I used just Chrome Gold and Chrome Silver 7" & 11" balloons to fill the spaces. The end result was perfect, it looked perfectly elegant and classy! Despite the Roaring 20's vibe, this wall would work perfectly well for a New Year's Eve party!

Centrepiece design ideas can always be a little tricky. Here's one that I made recently that would work perfectly for this style of decor! 

This elegant organic style design was made using a Plexipoles base and pole. I added two beautiful paper fans that complemented the "New Year Black & Gold Fan" Microfoil balloon perfectly! 

I recently designed a new style of balloon column that I named the "Artistic Sculptured Column". Only a few days after making this design for a client I was teaching at the Qualatex Event Mexico 2019 and decided to show my design to the delegates with a few small tweaks and changes from the original design. And the extra additions of the fan's paid off, as they worked perfectly with this design! 

To give you some idea of the scale of this column, I added a photograph with me standing next to it. 

All the designs shown above are air-filled, which is beneficial during this uncertain time of helium availability!

Don't forget - you can find more inspiring ideas by visiting the Qualatex website - click on INSPIRATION and then BALLOON DECOR, use the OCCASIONS tab to select New Year.

Happy Ballooning!

Sue
www.suebowler.com
#suebowler

Elegant Air-Filled Hanging Decor by Luc Bertrand.

The fabulous Luc Bertrand, CBA, of Waw Balloons in Vichte, Belgium, shares another one of his truly elegant designs that would work amazingly well for a New Year's celebrations. I also believe that this design would be fabulous for a store window display or decor for elegant black tie events.

Luc is a master at using the Qualatex^® Number Shapes to create elegant air-filled decor, and this beautiful design is no exception! As soon as I saw this design, I thought of the Fleur de Lys shape and saw how incredible, unique designs can be created using Luc's technique.

Materials required: Choose colours to suit your occasion or event.

2 - Number Six or Number Nine Microfoil^® Number Shape balloons.

3 -13" Taper Microfoil balloons.

1 - 27" Taper Microfoil balloon.

11 - 5" Latex balloons.

1 - 260Q to tie all the elements together.

Click-Click™ Stretchy Balloon Tape^®.

Heat Sealer.

Hand-pump or an electric air inflator suitable for inflating foil balloons.

Step 1.

• Air inflate the two number balloons and secure together using the stretchy tape.
• Air inflate all the Taper balloons. The 13" Taper balloons will require heat sealing. If you are not familiar with heat sealing, check out my post: "Heat Sealing Microfoil Balloons and Turn those Little Balloons into Big Profit Earners."
• Tie one of the 13" Tapers balloons to the 27" Taper balloons and tie the other two 13" Taper balloons together.  Attach an un inflated 260Q balloon at the joint so that this can be used to connect everything together.

Step 2.

• Connect the Tapers to the Number shape balloons as shown below using the 260Q. 
• Air inflate  two 5-balloon clusters using the sizes as indicated below and with one of the clusters add a centre balloo. This cluster will be positioned at the front of the design, and the other to the back of the design. Now connect the clusters as shown below, once again using the 260Q. 

This is a photograph of Luc's current window display for New Year's! I love the vibrant colours and the use of the "Celebration Pink Bubbly Wine" balloon with the "New Year Confetti Dots" balloon along with the number one and seven to make 2017! 

A huge thank you to Luc, who every year never fails to share a wonderful design with us for either Christmas or New Year's! 

Happy Ballooning!

Sue
www.suebowler.com

New Year’s Eve Party – Go Formal with Foils!

I too was busy this NYE, and like Matthew Lewis mentions in his blog 'Tips for a smooth New Year's Eve', I was able to start my preparations earlier in the week. Pre-inflating over 1000 - 5" balloons along with other small jobs that all take valuable time. Six hours of preparing sand weights, attaching fixing points to stars as well as many other little tasks! We were also able to start working on our NYE decor at the venue on the 30th of December which was such a bonus. Another six precious hours that we did not need to work on the day! Our job was in London, England; it was a repeat of the job that we did last year. Exactly the same decor, but in different colours so that made it very easy for us and a great opportunity to make some changes and improvements, making the job even quicker than last year!

Sue's Top Tips

1. Understand your customer’s needs and requirements. Space is a premium and most venues like to maximise their seating capacity to maximise their revenue, therefore they have limited space available for balloon decor. Design your decor to fit the available space. We love to work with Qualatex^® Starpoint Microfoil^® Balloons as we can create these elegant walls that fit neatly against the walls in the ballroom.

2. Check for magnet fixing points. Knowing your venue is very important, and I would always recommend a site visit. Finding fixing points for magnets is also very helpful. We used Click-Click™ ClickMagnets to keep our walls perfectly in position. 

3. Allow time for repairs or changes. If you get the opportunity to start early, you still need to ensure that your decor looks perfect on the day. Occasionally a balloon will go down overnight, so ensure that you allow enough time to make any repairs or changes. In many cases, the event manager will want to walk around the venue with you once you have finished to confirm that they are happy with everything that you have done. It must look absolutely perfect!

Tips or a Smooth New Year’s Eve – Exploding Balloons and Balloon Drops

New Year’s Eve is such an important occasion. Expectations are high! Everyone wants it to be memorable and the "best night ever!" Venues charge top rates for people to attend a gala or party, and many charge customers to even visit a bar or club that would normally be free. So there is huge importance and responsibility on the event decorator to get it right!

Matthew Lewis, CBA, of No Ordinary Balloon Company in Coventry, United Kingdom, is very busy leading up to New Year’s Eve (NYE) and mainly offers special effects to his clients. I asked Matthew if he would share some of his top tips when planning his NYE campaign.