It’s getting closer to wedding season so this week, Mark Drury show us how to make a wedding balloon decoration with a fun twist! We are going to make a bride and groom standing character but without a head! Why without a head? All will be revealed at the end.

Mark starts by inflating a 646Q balloon, these are 6 inches in diameter and 46 inches in length. We don’t need the whole length of the balloon so Mark pushes the neck of the balloon down on the inflator so as not to inflate the neck. If you did and let some air out, the odd thing about 646Q balloons is that they would reduce in width before the would reduce in length. So instead of a short fat balloon you would be left with an incredibly long and thing balloon! We’re after short and fat here so squash the neck down until you feel you’ve got the right length for an arm. Inflate and tie off two of these.

Next is the body of the groom, Mark is going to use a 3ft heart balloon but he needs to stretch out the corners of the heart first. He does this to get as much stretch in the corners as possible as he isn’t going to fully inflate the latex, but still wants a nice pronounced heart shape. Mark inflates the heart to 3ft and ties with a deflated 260Q. If you don’t know how to tie 3ft balloons then check out our Balloon Basics video here.

Now onto the base. Mark has pre-inflated some 4-balloon clusters and ties them off to a water weight. He uses staggered sizes of balloons to create more interest into the base. He attaches the heart to the base by wrapping the 260Q around the clusters and tying. To attach the arms Mark is going to use Balloon Bond. This is effectively a double-sided adhesive that creates a very strong connection point between balloons. You do need to hold it together for the glue to take hold, but once stuck, you are more likely to pop the balloons than pull them apart.

Mark cuts off a strip of balloon bond and first attaches it to the top of both arms. He also wants to create a bend in each of the arms so he ripples the inside of the balloons. Now all that is required is to remove the backing tape on the Balloon Bond and attach the arms to the heart. You will need to hold the arms in place for about a minute to get a strong adhesion. Next Mark adds some finishing touches like buttons on the shirt, cufflinks and a nice bow tie at the top. All these are added on with balloon bond again.

That’s it the design is fin- what’s that? The head? Oh yes, so the great twist with this decoration is that they are for having your photo taken as a groom! If you put this design in an entrance hall or a reception room at a wedding, you’ll be sure that people will go up and stand behind it to have their photo taken! But of course, we need a matching bride, Mark has made one of those as well! This is the same principle but Mark used heart balloons for the clusters at the bottom, and created a nice bunch of flowers as a bouquet for her to hold. The bouquet is made from 260Qs using tulip twists and wrapped in tulle. If you don’t know how to make a tulip twist, then keep an eye out for a future Balloon Basics show coming very soon!

Rob

As always, you can get in touch with us by commenting below, sending us an email or commenting on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to receive these weekly video updates, you can either keeping checking this blog, subscribe to email updates in your account settings or you can subscribe to our Youtube channel.