Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Balloon octopus


Materials: balloons, a permanent marker and scissors.

Buy balloons on Amazon (paid link): 
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We are going to make sea monster in a shape of jellyfish or octopus. We can use one balloon per tentacle to make larger size sculptures, than it would take eight balloons to make it. Well, if you work with 160, then you can use one balloon to make four tentacles. As always, I work with the fewest possible number of 260's. So, we are going to use four balloons to make medium size sculpture. Inflate four balloons leaving about two-inch flat tail (Pic 1).

Squeeze each balloon to make it soft. Pump the air to the end of the flat tail. Fold the balloon in half. Mark the spot. That is where we are going to make the twist and lock all balloons in one lock twist. You can twist each balloon one by one, or twist all balloons in one move. Hold all four balloons in the center in one hand (Pic 2).

Twist and lock all four balloons in one move (Pic 3). We have made eight tentacles. The sculpture looks like some kind of star at this point.

Our next step varies. It depends on what we want to make. Here is one way to make the monster. Put the sculpture a side for now. Get a flat balloon of any color. Tie both ends of the flat balloon in one knot. Put your hand through the loop of the flat balloon (Pic 4).

Hold the sculpture at the center in the hand with the flat balloon on it. Use your other hand to roll the flat balloon down the sculpture (Pic 5 and 6). I place the flat balloon about one third or one fourth length of the sculpture down from the center. Fix all bubbles in proper positions. You can use appropriate size rubber band instead of the flat balloon. The only the purpose of this band is keep all bubbles together.


The loose ends of the sculpture represent tentacles. Let’s shape them. Basically, I three fold each tentacle. The top part of the sculpture represents the head or the body of the monster. I don’t know the proper name for it. Is it a belly-head? I guess something like that (Pic 7 through 9).



We can use a permanent black marker to draw eyes (Pic 10).

Congratulations, we have made a sea monster (Pic 11).

Bellow is an example of another way to make the sea monster. Measure about one third from the top of the sculpture. Twist and lock all bubbles at this point in one lock twist (Pic 12 through 14).



Use different color balloons to make the monster (Pic 15).

Instead of drawing eyes we can use a different color balloon to make the eyes (Pic 16 through 18). In this example I used orange balloons to make the monster and black balloon to make the eyes. 
Have fun and happy twisting :)


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