If you’re searching for inspiring ways to embellish with balloons for your next celebration, impress your visitors with a colorful and dramatic balloon wall, a concept that originates from our good friend Rachel Huntington of Bonjour Fête, based in Los Angeles, Calif. Before you start, find the best spot and size of wall area for your balloon screen, select your color combination, and choose how it will work as a focal point, such as a backdrop for pictures or to highlight a celebration buffet or present table.
Once you’ve chosen the size of the background for the balloon wall, you can determine how many balloons you will require for assembly. As a basic rule, Huntington utilizes about two to three balloons per foot of wall space. To start, follow these detailed instructions to build the garland, which will be used to produce each “layer” of the wall.
Desire a more environmentally friendly option? Seek out biodegradable balloons like Qualatex or paper balloons from Hiromi Paper, Paper Tree, and Uguisu.
What You’ll Need
Materials
Balloons
Handheld balloon pump (Qualatex Balloon Pump).
Monofilament (Berkley Trilene Big Game Monofilament Fishing Line).
Command hooks (Command Small Clear Wire Hooks).
Directions.
Determine the Balloon Garland’s Dimensions.
Determine the measurements of your balloon garland. In overall, we used about 150 balloons for this appearance, differing in sizes 5, 11, 16, and 36 inches.
Produce Balloon Groupings.
Pump up all balloons (with air and not helium) to different sizes utilizing your handheld pump. Push them down a little after they are connected off to make the shape more round than oval. Next, tie groups of two balloons together to produce what is called a duplet. Twist 2 groupings together to form a quad of four balloons. Once total, you are ready to connect several quads together to build your garland.
Put Together the Balloon Garland With Fishing Line.
We utilize fishing line to build our garlands of quads. To begin, connect your fishing line to something (a chair leg will do) and leave at least 2 feet at the end. Then, grab your balloon quad and weave the string around the balloons in the shape of a figure 8 to lock them into place. Repeat, adding on the additional pre-made quads and loading them close together so that there is not a lot of area between each quad till you accomplish your desire length.
Install the Balloon Garland With Removable Hooks.
Remove your garland from the area where it was tied up and get your wall or backdrop ready. In this case, we used Command hooks and applied them straight to the wall. (Tip: Wipe down your wall with an alcohol swab to make sure the command hook has a clean surface area.) When applying the adhesive backing to the command hook, be sure the tab is dealing with down for easy removal. Thread the fishing line into the eyelet on the command hook and connect it off. For this garland we decided to color block in random chunks to match the graphic playfulness of our table set up. To protect garlands to each other, take a brand-new length of fishing line and run it between your garlands protecting them to each other to make more of a wall.
Accent the Balloon Garland With Jumbo Balloons.
Use a 260Q balloon, likewise called a twisting balloon, to incorporate big jumbo balloons into the wall. Take the 260Q and connect it to the 36-inch balloon so that it produces practically a tail on the balloon. You can use this “tail” to protect the 36-inch balloon into the wall by twisting it amongst other quads or tying it to fishing line.
