Silver Balloon Wall Installation

I really love to work with Qualatex^® Starpoint and Taper balloons. There is something really elegant and a little different about these balloons - they are perfect for making balloon walls!

A few weeks ago, I was approached by a brand development agency who wanted me to build two balloon installations using silver square balloons to create an "immersive walkway." The client had been inspired by Andy Warhol's "Silver Balloons" exhibit that he first made in the 60's! The silver square balloons were hand-made - in fact, they were known as "floating Metallic Pillows." 

After further discussions with the client and a computer-generated visual image, we agreed that I would create two Starpoint and Taper balloon walls. These balloon walls offered the fabulous shiny effect that they were looking for. Plus, we added a little visual movement within the walls by positioning the sections so that it created a slight wave rather than being totally straight. 

Today, I am going to share with you some simple steps on how to make these fabulous balloon walls!

Firstly, I created a design on my computer for my client to see and approve. This also functioned as my working design sheet on the day. This is really easy to do. You simply go to www.Qualatex.com and download the balloon images that you want to use. I love the fact that they save as a .png file, which means that it does not have any background to the image! I then simply added and arranged the balloon images in a WORD document to create the design of the proposed wall. 

Each wall consisted of forty 40" Silver Starpoint balloons and seventy-seven 27" Silver Taper Balloons.

We found it easier to make the wall in smaller sections rather than trying to build the wall in one go. We connected eight Starpoint balloons together using a cable tie gun before inflation, making sure to not to connect the valve points. We tied these after inflation.

Connecting the valve points after inflation.

Once we had prepared all the sections, we connected them all together. You can use a cable tie gun or a scrap of 260Q. Both work very well! 

You can see from this photo how the balloons looked when connected together, several people commented on how they did not look like balloons once they were connected!

The first section of wall made - sharing our work-space with some amazing vintage dummies.

To inflate the foil balloons we used the Premium FoilPro™. This machine is designed for easy, hands-free (using a foot pedal) inflation of foil balloons as well as latex and balloons that require higher-pressure. The great thing about this inflator is that it has a special nozzle that provides the correct inflation pressure for foils, with no risk of damaging self-sealing valves.

Each wall was made up of five sections as shown above. Once all the sections were prepared, we connected them together.

Here is a view of the wall from outside - we had to make sure that it looked good from both sides!

This was a really great project to work on. We learned a lot on the way. Needless to say, that the second wall was made in half the time of the first wall! The client was really happy and gave us great feedback! 

"We loved working with you on this project and want to thank you for doing such a fab job,. Everyone loved the installation!"

A huge thank you to my team, Nicci Rene and John Bowler. And thank you Nicci, for the great photographs!

Happy Ballooning

Sue
www.suebowler.com 

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Have you started your New Year's Eve preparations yet?

It's that time of the year when there is so much going on! We have just celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas is looming, and New Year's Eve will be here before we know it... and of course Valentine's Day has a habit of sneaking up on us very quickly! 

With so many key seasonal decorating opportunities over the next few weeks and months, I thought that it would be a great opportunity to look at some of these holidays and celebrations, and offer some advice and inspiration!

New Year's Eve is one seasonal event that you can be sure there will be many decorating opportunities. hotels, restaurants, public halls, and night clubs to name just a few, will be packed with party goers looking for an amazing evening of fun and celebrations! 

In recent years, I had the opportunity to decorate a beautiful London hotel. My brief was to decorate two key areas in the hotel: the very elegant ballroom and the main entrance foyer.

Ballroom Decor
Qualatex® Starpoint balloons proved to be the perfect choice for my decor in this extremely elegant room (see photograph below). We had eight small alcoves to position our decor, four on each side of the room. With the room being filled to capacity with tables and diners, it was important that we kept our decor within the allocated space and not encroaching into the main floor space.

Hotel Ballroom without balloons.

Tip: Ensure that you fully understand what areas of the room are to be decorated. What are your constraints, for example - access points or service tables?