August 16th, 2017
First birthday celebrations + How to make a balloon wall
We’re still over here trying to wrap our minds around the fact that we have a one year old?! It also seems like from the day he turned one he’s just matured and seems so much older. Every day he’s making up laugh more with the new things he does, learns and mimics!
I’m not party planner but we did our best to pull off a fun filled birthday for our little guy (in 10 days)! I originally wanted to rent a space with beautiful white walls but then I had a reality check with myself and went the path of convenience so we booked the party room in our condo. Best decision ever. We kept it small (as small as we could with being Greek and having large families hehe). It was such a perfect fun afternoon filled with everyone who adores J – was a very humbling and good feeling looking around knowing so many people wish our little guy so much love.
Let’s just say the decor is not the best in that room so I know I wanted to create some kind of backdrop where we could snap some birthday photos and showcase the cake! That’s when the big balloon garland or wall started. We did the garland already (though I feel like now I could totally have made it WAY better) so I thought let’s go for something different, a balloon wall!
Scroll down to learn how we made the balloon wall!
I searched the internet and couldn’t find an “easy” way to do this – there was poles and tying four balloons together stacking them – all seemed like way too much work so I thought lets just bring down my photography background stands and do four mini garland style strips and then tie it together…that’s just what we did.
It took us about 4 hours to get together – it was me and my mom with Ko piping in and out – we blew the balloons up the day before (well Ko, my sister, dad and mom did because I got a blister after the 15th balloon which cue’ed a very interesting discussion on how to tie balloons without getting blisters – I was clearly doing it wrong!)
So here’s how we did it and what you can do to make your life easier!
What You’ll Need:
Lots of balloons (whatever shades you’d like) in different sizes we had: 24″ 11″ 9″ and 5″ You can buy them here online (both US and CAD sites)
Fishing Wire
Needle
Stand or something to hang the balloons from
Low Temp Glue Gun
Steps:
1. Blow up all the balloons before you start. Blow up a lot (and I mean a lot) – this can be done the day before as well which is what we did!
2. We used my background stand, so we set it up against the wall and then tied 4 strands of fishing wire from the top all the way tot the bottom.
3. We went to the first strand and tied the needle to the end and starting needling through all the balloons all the different sizes (except the small ones)
4. Repeat this step 4 times till all the strands are full. We ended up adding one more to really make it full see image below.
5. Take the fishing and horizontally thread them together from bottom to top. Once you tie them tight they will bounce together more tightly and appear more “full” – we also should have done each strand right to the bottom – we thought it wouldn’t show because the table would be there but it did 🙂
6. Now you fill up the space! We used tape which I would NOT recommend. I had this idea I was going to use the balloons the next day lol Use a low temp glue gun instead and take all the small 5″ balloons as well as some other sizes and start filling in all the empty space. I would add one or two more balloons sometimes for each open space to really make it look full. Fill to taste!
VOILA! Your balloon wall is complete!
The verdict? I definitely prefer balloons garlands over this not sure we’ll be attempting this one again for a while but in case you want to give it a go – go wild! 🙂
