My first week

I placed a call to a balloon professional from San Diego (Sandi from Balloon Utopia), who gave me a few pointers about what I need to do to get started in the balloon twisting profession. She was very positive, and told me to make goals and practice. I made the goal to learn one new design a day.

Monday,(March 21) the balloons came in. YouTube became my friend. I looked up simple things like, how to tie a balloon, and how to make a dog, a sword, etc. My first balloon was a weird looking dog.

Tuesday, I added a sword to my repertoire. I didn't like most of the balloons they were teaching that had regular handles. I like the one with the bubbly handle, so I found a tutorial from Italy. Fortunately, it's not that important to understand everything they say, as long as you see what's going on. Here are the kids with their swords.


Wednesday, I worked on flowers. I found a video teaching how to make a rose. This was a little harder than a normal flower, but still functional. I made several, which looked nice as a bouquet. I also reviewed the dog and timed myself doing it. It took a minute and 15 seconds. The world record for making 100 balloon dogs in the least amount of time is 5:48 (that's minutes and seconds). Yes the balloons were pre-inflated. So was mine when I timed it. I have a LOT of work to do.

Thursday, I worked on a business card and got myself a domain name. although I haven't built the website yet, the web address is going to be www.sunnyballoons.com. I like the name. After all, I am in Sunny Florida, right? My new project for the day was a mouse. I also worked on and made a snake but that required mouth blowing. My neck is still sore from all the blowing that I was trying to do. Whatever will I do when I have to make curly cues?

Friday was a bit of a clean-up day. The boys helped me put all the balloons that were scattered all over the floor from the week into a corner, and I was able to vacuum the floor. Once the floor was vacuumed, Josiah and Noah decided they needed to help me pump balloons. Here they are:


I had planned to take them to the playground and do some practicing there, but time was not on our side, and that plan fell through. I used the Mario balloon that the boys had gotten from a balloon guy in Chili's and figured out how to make a Luigi. It took me over an hour, but here is what he looked like. It was not on the list of things to learn this week, but I did it any way.


And that's it for this week. I planned on blogging each day, but the delay was in starting the blog. I have one now, though, so I can now continue with my daily progress (possibly skipping weekends, or using weekends to review). I hope you enjoy following my progress, and in future posts, I hope to be very informative and educational.