Welcome to my balloon twisting for beginners series where I teach you
how to twist balloons like a pro hi I'm Melanie from Balloon Artworks in Derbyshire in the UK
today i'm going to show you how to make a simple balloon bow this balloon includes a pinch twist so
i'm going to show you how to make a pinch twist as part of this design so you're going to need a 260
and inflate the balloon to a two finger tail
okay and then tie so i did soften a little bit there and if you want a refresher on
the time technique check out the first lesson in this series which is where i show you how
to make a pirate sword and i'm going through in some detail how to tie so you're going to
we want to make the the tail of the bow one of the tails so i'm going to twist off a bubble
that is about four to five inches okay and then as we did for the pirate sword
make a loop okay and if i spread my hand this way my hands down that's about the size of the
loop so maybe another five inches and then twist okay and then make another loop to match this one
i'm just going to soften my balloon slightly this is feeling a little bit full and measure the two
bubbles together and then twist okay and then i just like to check that they're a similar
size and just wrap those two together so they're not going to come undone okay
now what you'll notice if we leave the bow like this it's going to sit like that
and if you're not confident with this next stage where i'll show you how to make a pinch twist
then you can always make a bow like this unless you become more confident with your pinch twists
you know you can move on to the next stage but if you if you just find the next stage too difficult
then you can leave your bow like this so we really want the loops of our bows to sit like this
and that's why we need to make a pinch twist because a pinch twist will hold everything in
position and will stop the bone and sitting this way so what you need to do is just give your
balloon a squeeze to make sure everything's nice and soft and then just twist off a bubble here
okay and then what you need to do is fold your balloon over
grab hold of that bubble pull it out and then twist it round pull it out and twist it round
okay and that gives you a little bubble
that will hold the ends of your bows in your bow in place okay now you will see that this
tail is a little bit shorter than this one so because i tied a soft knot i can just pull that
down and just lengthen just squeeze the air into the end and that is leveled up those two tails so
they look a very similar length and then what i'm going to do is i'm just going to snip off the end
i'm just going to trim this blue and just snip off that bit of nozzle
so it just makes the end a little bit tighter
if you like the rounded look of your bow that's great you can leave it like that but if you want
to square off the bow a little bit you can use the technique that we that i showed you a big
shock twist or the massaging so this is more of a massaging of the balloon so just part the
the loop and with your hands just massage so what i'm doing is massaging the sides
and you can see the difference in the shape so that's not more of a squared off
look okay and then we'll do the same thing on the other side so just part the loop
and cup your hands around this part here and just gently massage
okay and that gives you a squared off look so then you've got a really easy bow that's great
to add to your flower bouquets and your other design lings and you've mastered pinch twists
pinch twists are probably the hardest technique that you will have to master in your balloon
twisting journey but they're well worth it because they can make such a difference to what you can
create as a balloon artist so remember to like the video subscribe to my channel so you don't
miss any of my future balloon twisting lessons for beginners and i'll see you in the next lesson