With the Cost of Helium Increasing, Let's Take a Look at Air-Filled Balloon Delivery and Decor Solutions!

As we are all likely aware, helium prices are rising and availability is becoming more limited. This means it is time to start thinking about creating more air-filled designs and decor! That does not mean that we should not be using helium, but if you are, you should think of different ways to keep your helium costs down! 

Let's start with keeping helium costs down. There is a great post by Balloon Biz Academy, written by Sonia Payne where she gives 10 Great Cost Busting Tips for Helium use in your Business 

So let's look at some air-filled creativity!

Air-filled decor has been steadily increasing for a number of years now. There are many balloon businesses that do not work with helium at all, offering only air-filled dećor featured with props and backdrops to enhance their installations! When it comes to deliveries, the perfect solutions (although not my favourite to make as they are time consuming and tend to use a lot of tape and glue) are Balloon Stacks, or Balloon Marquees, as they are also known as. Check out these popular hashtags: #balloonstack and #balloonmarquee

Jackie Ochitwa, CBA of With a Twist in Alberta, Canada always creates the perfect 'Balloon Stacks'!

They are fun, exciting and packed with all those extra little details! 

Air-Filled Balloon Decor with Props

Organic balloon displays that are 100% air-filled have been trending for quite some time now, and they don't appear to be waning in popularity! There are many companies that only offer organic balloon displays, and are able to run very successful balloon businesses.

This fantastic balloon display below was created by Blow it with Bex,  based in Southampton, UK. Bex used 7" Qualatex Chrome balloons to create this stunning display on a popular wire-mesh frame with a Happy Birthday light-up neon sign and a touch of greenery... what's not to love! 

The design featured below was an installation created by myself and Nicci Gibson from Balloon Bouquets  based in London, UK. This decor was created for a Valentine's corporate event and was designed to allow guests to move around within a framed area. This design included balloons and paper accessories that gave it more visual texture.

If you would like to learn more about Organic Balloon Styling, check out my blog post - Exploring Organic Balloon Décor Styles  or visit https://theverybestballoonblog.blogspot.com/2021/07/exploring-organic-balloon-decor-styles.html

Balloon Walls

I love designing and making balloons walls! I have always found these to be very popular for events, especially for corporate clients. Balloon Walls can be made using round balloons in various different techniques, and QuickLinks for some truly amazing results!

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

• Corporate logo
• Themed background
• Themed entrance
•  Photo or stage back-drop
• To enhance a trade show or exhibition stand

This fantastic QuickLink balloon wall is perfect for a child's space theme party. If you have never worked with QuickLink balloons, you should definitely try them out! As the name suggests, you can build decor very quickly using this type of balloon! 

Balloon Wall and Decor by Zoe Adam-Jones, CBA of Jazz Trading,
Queensland, Australia.
This wall was used as the stage back-drop at the Qualatex Event in Brazil, 2019.

This Balloon Wall welcomed guests into the Moscow Balloon Festival in 2019
Designed and made by Olga Baranova, CBA and Olga Samoilova, CBA.

To learn how to make this complete design visit  - even the 3' balloon is air-filled! https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bspsettingthescene1and2

Balloon Arches

When it comes to designing and building balloon Arches, you can really let your creativity go wild! Featured below is a fabulous selection of arches. I love all the different themes, and the mix of balloon types, all offering a great contrast in texture.

Jungle Theme Arch by
M & M Balloon Co. in Seattle, USA

This Football or Soccer theme arch was designed by
Cam Woody of Pioneer Balloon Company.

This Disney Theme Arch was designed and created by
Keith Stirman and Dominic Cassidy of All Things Fun in Durham, UK.

This fun Jungle theme arch design was the work of 
Keith Stirman and Dominic Cassidy of All Things Fun in Durham, UK.

There are so many opportunities to create appealing air-filled decor. If you would like even more inspiration, check out these great pages on the Qualatex website! 

Air-Filled Solutions for Retail

Air-Filled Solutions for Decorators

Many of the high street chain stores are turning away customers, as they cannot get any helium supplies. As a balloon professional, it is really important to find air-filled solutions to ensure that we can continue to grow our balloon businesses! 

Happy ballooning! 

Sue

www.suebowlercom

Follow me @suebowler

Qualatex @ The Moscow Balloon Festival 2019

Beautiful "Mythical Caticorn" Column Design
by Larisa Ketskalo, CBA and Anhelika Vahurna, CBA.

This year the Moscow Balloon Festival celebrated its 20th Anniversary, and it certainly did not disappoint! I first attended the festival in 2002, and so much has changed since my first visit! This event is sponsored by different balloon, equipment and accessory manufacturers, and many of the competitions are sponsored by different balloon companies. It is always very interesting to see how different manufacturer's products have  an impact on a design - but in my opinion the Qualatex Chrome balloons really stood out this year! 

1st Place Winners of the Master Sculpture Competition
Olga Baranova, Olga Samoilova, Tatyana Dyusmetova,
Ekaterina Poroshkina, Artem Sadovnikov, Tatiana Afanasieva.

Many of the Russian balloon professionals who attend this event are extremely talented. I would even go as far as saying that they are probably some of the best in the world! It was an absolute joy to be able to see their incredible work up close!

Attendee's attending the festival were greeting with fabulous Qualatex decor created by
Olga Baranova, CBA & Olga Samoilova, CBA.

Two of the teams at this year's festival were sponsored by Qualatex, and I am delighted to report that each team did exceptionally well. Between the two of them they won many of the competitions!

SD Shar Team:
Alexander Solomatin
Vadim Shushkanov
Dmitry Novikov
Vadim Nesterenko
Olga Nesterenko
Armen Egshatyaan

Olga Baranova,
Olga Samoilova,
Tatyana Dyusmetova, 
Ekaterina Poroshkina,
Artem Sadovnikov,
Tatiana Afanasieva.

First Place Winner of the Masters Large Sculpture - Team Captain Olga Baranova, CBA

Here are a few words from team captain Olga Baranova who, in a message on Facebook, describes her joy, happiness and gratitude to her team members. The text was in Russian and with the help of translate I have changed it to English, and although it's probably not a perfect translation, you can definitely feel her excitement!

"The 20th Balloon Festival in Moscow!!! The most prestigious and most awaited event of the year!!! The whole thing flew by one breath!! Joyful meetings, nice news, open family faces!!!This year, the team "Group of Comrades" performed at the Moscow Festival for the seventh time, and showed a very high level of skill in all categories of festival works!!! We did it! We did it, we have the first place in the nomination "Big Sculpture" in the Masters League!!!! We made a gorgeous dress, very worthily worn by Katya on the podium!!!My dear, comrades, thank you for this competition, for the atmosphere on the set, for understanding with half words and half-looks! And despite the fact that the preparation was not easy at all, we did decent work and became winners!!! Our bird of happiness revealed its wings!!!! and yes, happiness is!!!!!"

Here are a few more photographs and designs from Olga's Team!

Grand Prix Winner (the team that scores the most points overall) and Third Place Winner of the Masters Large Sculpture - Team Captain Alexander Solomatin, CBA.

Team Captain Alexander first attended the Moscow Balloon Festival 2008. He attended one of Alberto Falcone's classes, and this experience changed both his balloon perspective and life forever.  

 I asked Alexander if he would tell me a little bit about this years festival and what it meant to him.

"This year the Moscow Festival was very important for me. This was the first time after a long break that we reunited with almost our original team, which in 2014 saw us win our first prizes in the industry. Working with my old friends side by side gave me great happiness.  

It took us a very long time to find an idea for our large sculpture; it was our 20th sculpture and we didn’t want to do something boring or repeat ourselves. As a prototype we chose the dragon 'Drogon' from the 'Games of Thrones' series. We have waited a long time to create this dragon. The biggest problem creating such an impressive figure for the balloon festival is that it is very difficult to make it realistic and well detailed. So we decided to make only a head, and the image that we chose made it rather risky because we decided to build it on the diagonal of the site, and with the direction not from bottom to top, but from top to bottom. Initially, we transferred the image to a large scale grid, and day-after-day we measured each corner by a millimeter, this allowed us to create an accurately scaled wireframe structure. 

In total, the creating of this figure took us around two weeks. It was precisely calibrated and meticulous work on each line and every corner of the figure that gave such a realistic result in the end. We are very happy that we decided to do it and we believe that at the moment it is the pinnacle of our career. I would like to express my gratitude to all members of our team: Dmitry Novikov, Vadim Shushkanov, Vadim Nesterenko, Olga Nesterenko, Armen Yegshatyan."

The picture of the complete Drogon head can be seen above and in greater detail on the video.

It is always an absolute joy and pleasure to attend the Moscow Balloon Festival. Seeing in excess of thirty large sculptures in one room is awe-inspiring! The level of design, creativity, and skill is truly breath-taking! I love how each team embraces the competition categories, and different members of the team take on lead roles in each of these categories. The fashion show is one of my personal highlights; not only are the costumes pure works of art that demonstrate an incredible skillset, the designs and models are also choreographed to music, which makes the show even more exciting!

My role at the festival was to share some of my design ideas and to showcase the magnificent range of Qualatex balloons to the delegates. Here are a few of the designs that I demonstrated:

"Selling the Dream" Tropical Balloon Wall by Sue Bowler, CBA

Valentines Designs by Sue Bowler

International Woman's Day - March 8th by Sue Bowler

Halloween Surprise Box design by Sue Bowler

A huge congratulations to the organisers, Europa Uno Trade and all those involved for another tremendous event! 

Happy Ballooning! 

Sue
www.suebowler.com
#suebowler

Russian Balloon Artists Olga Baranova, CBA and Olga Samoilova, CBA share their creative flair!

I recently attended the 15th Moscow Balloon Festival and I can honestly say that I was completely blown away by the incredible balloon art that was  exhibited at this event! 

One of this year's design teams was headed up by formidable artists Olga Baranova, CBA and Olga Samoilova, CBA. You might be familiar with these artists as they won first place Large Sculpture at the World Balloon Convention 2014, and then went on to win first place Master Sculpture at BACI 2014.



Olga Baranova CBA & Olga Samoilova, CBA run a very successful balloon business, Sonlnechny Veter (or Sun Veter which translates to "Sunny Wind") from their home city of Samara, Russia.