Hi everyone. Welcome to my Balloon Garland for Beginners series where I show you how to make
balloon garland like a professional balloon stylist. Hi I'm Melanie from Balloon Artworks
here in Derbyshire in the UK. Today we're going to be focusing on how to make a really full look,
full bodied, organic balloon garland. Sometimes you see balloon garland that looks a little bit
on the skinny side. That's not what we're about today. We're going absolutely full out, full-on,
full body. There are going to be times when you want to prepare your balloon garland
and then move it elsewhere and I've got a really good knot for you that's going to help you secure
your garland whilst you're preparing it but then you're going to be able to undo it really easily
and transport your garland elsewhere. I'm using a braided polyester lime this is 2mm. I'll leave a
link in the description below to where you can get this. So this is 2mm and this is the grade that I
would use for outdoors. 1mm is absolutely fine for indoors. I'll use the thicker grade to demonstrate
the tying technique. Loop around whatever it is you want to tie. I'm just going to drop the end
the spool because it's going to get in the way. Okay so loop that around whatever you want to tie
and then make a knot but don't pull the loose end all the way through. So just make a loop like that
and then take the end and pull that through the loop. OK and then we can just pull that
tight so that's going to stay in position. If you've got horses you'll recognize this knot.
This is how I hitch my horses when I'm caring for them. So you can prepare your garland
add the balloons to your garland and then when you're ready
to move your garland you can just take the loose tail and just pull it through
and it comes undone really easily. We're going to be using a wide range of balloons today
5-inch rounds, 11-inch balloons or 12-inch balloons, 16-inch balloons. Don't worry if
you haven't got the 16-inches. Don't worry your balloon garland will look perfect even
without the 16-inch balloons, so don't worry about those. And 2-foot and 3-foot balloons. If you can
only get one or the other size don't worry use those. Ii'm a big believer in using what you can
get your hands on and what's available. For the larger 2 and 3-foot balloons I like to take a 260
make a loop
and then put that over the neck of the balloon and that secures it really well. This is a great way
to connect your 2 and 3-foot balloons for indoor displays. I've got a cluster of four
organically sized 11-inch balloons sized between about eight inches and six and a half inches
and I'm just going to pull the tails from that balloon that large balloon into this cluster
and then wrap the tails around and then I'm going to tie
that 3-foot in fact it's a 2-foot balloon into position. Okay so that's nice and secure
and I'm going to position this in the corner here so I'm taking my length of line
my braided polyester line and I'm just going to wrap that round a couple of times
Okay I've got my microphone line caught here so please bear with me - I think it might come
to grief if I'm not careful. I'm now adding a 16-inch balloon with a cluster of three
and again wrapping that in to the garland. At this point don't get too hung up about how things look.
We're creating what I call the skeleton and then we will add to that skeleton and fill out as we go
and things do move as you add the balloons. When you're attaching your clusters
to your braided line do be careful to add them gently because if you pull the line through
the latex it can burn the balloons and create a small hole
in the latex so do just be careful when you're adding the balloons to the garland
So now we've got our skeleton garland in place we can fill this out by adding more
balloons and more texture and the more variety of balloons that you add the more of a textured look
you will get. Now we've got that skeleton in place it's really important to keep stepping back from
your display to have a look at how it looks from a distance because it's really tricky to know from
here particularly looking down on the display what it looks like. So I'll be running up and
down the stairs to check the view and I will also be running to the other side of the gallery to
see how it looks from different angles and that's really important and it's one of the reasons that
organic displays take such a long time to create because you're constantly having to look at the
display and deciding where the balloons need to be added and what colours need to be added where.
It's very much like an artist painting a canvas - they're looking at it and they know where the next
brush strokes need to go but they need to step back and look and see the whole picture and that's
what you need to do. This is your canvas so make sure you step back from it and keep checking on it