Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Balloon crown


Supplies: balloons, an air pump and scissors.

Buy balloons on Amazon (paid link): 
 Buy an air pump on Amazon (paid link): 

Inflate balloons leaving about 16-18 cm flat tails (Pic 1).

We are going to twist all bubbles of the same about 3 cm size (Pic 2). I am going to use this balloon to make the top (the first row) of the crown. Twist the first bubble.

Twist the second bubble. Lock both ends of the second bubble in one lock twist (Pic 3).

Twist a chain of the next three (the third, the fourth and the fifth) bubbles). Lock both ends of the fifth bubble in one lock twist. Work the rest of the balloon in the same way: twist a chain of three bubbles and then lock both ends of the last bubble in one lock twist (Pic 4 through 7).



You have to hold both ends of the balloon all the time while you work with a chain of unlocked bubbles to prevent untwisting. In this example I've made 20 bubbles out of one balloon. The rest of the balloon is not long enough to finish the sculpture (Pic 7). We have to use another balloon or two to make the rest of the sculpture. I prefer to attach a new balloon to the last bubble with both locked ends.

Tie nozzle of the second balloon with the twentieth bubble of the first balloon. Later I am going to cut off the rest of the first balloon (Pic 8).

Work the second balloon in the same fashion as we did the first balloon. Twist a chain of three bubbles (Pic 9). And then lock both ends of the third (the last bubble) in one lock twist. And so on.

You have to make the chain of bubbles long enough for you to wrap it around your head. It would be the size of the crown. Don't stretch the chain while taking the measure - you want the crown to fit you nicely. I made a chain of 27 bubbles for the first row of my crown. With this size of bubbles it should fit small or my medium size bold head (Pic 10). For larger size crown you should twist three more bubbles. If you make bubbles of larger size than it would take less bubbles to make the crown.

Lock both ends of the chain of the first twenty seven bubbles in one lock twist (Pic 11). We have made the top of the crown or the first row.

We have to make two bubbles of the second row for each three bubbles of the top row. Twist a chain of the next two (the twenty eighth and the twenty ninth) bubbles (Pic 12).

Lock both ends of the chain of the last five (the twenty fifth through the twenty ninth) bubbles in one lock twist (Pic 13).

Then we twist the next two bubbles. And lock both ends of the chain of the last 10 bubbles in one lock twist. Keep working in this fashion around the sculpture until you complete the second (the bottom) row of the crown. If you run out of balloon at any point then you have to attach the third balloon (Pic 14 and 15).


It takes total of forty five bubbles to make the crown of this size (Pic 16).

Cut off the rest of the balloons and tie off the ends. Fix all bubbles in proper positions (Pic 17 through 24). Congratulations! We have made the crown. I call it the old king balloon crown. As you may know, queens and princess prefer fancier crowns. There is faster and even easier way to make this crown working two rows at the same time. In previously published instruction "Cake" I use this technique to make the sides of the cake. Working this sculpture with one balloon at a time you are guarantee to make the crown with no more than three balloons. Working two rows at the same time could take 2 or 4 balloons to make the crown. I've done it many times and I am sure that with some practice you would make this size crown with just a pair of balloons. You can make many variations of this kind of crowns. For example you may increase size of bubbles or you can use different color balloons to make this sculpture.  Have fun and happy twisting :)






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