Froggies! (and snake)

I’ve seen some different frog designs, and here’s a pretty simple one that I like. It uses a green 260 balloon for the frog body, and a bit of yellow or white (you can use a leftover scrap) for the eyes.

See the video here. (The person in the video has also made many other videos which are available from the same site, and are worth a look.)

Comments on the video instructions: You will want to leave about a 4.5 inch tail when blowing up the green balloon. I quickly ran out of “balloon” and had to make sure not to make any bubbles too large. If you do find that you’ve run out of balloon, you can just make the two legs from a second green balloon and then attach them.

To make a simple snake: just make the head of the frog. When blowing up the balloon, leave a smaller tail (around 1.5 inches), as you won't be making as many twists. After making the head, bend the rest of the balloon into a zig-zag shape. Push the air into the uninflated part of the balloon. I also attached an uninflated piece of leftover red balloon for the snake tongue.

[ Video instructions by Dale Obrochta ]

Helicopter

Little kids (especially boys) seem to love trains, trucks, and other vehicles. So, when I came across instructions for this helicopter balloon, I was eager to try it out. This balloon takes two balloons - preferably one 160 (for the rotors) and one 260 (for the helicopter body.) If you only have 260s, two 260s will work just fine.

See the directions from Professor Wonder here.

 

My comments on the instructions: You will use up the entire balloon for the helicopter body. I found that I quickly ran out of "balloon" and I had to make a lot of the bubbles smaller than what the instructions called for. (For example, the 6 inch bubbles were more like 3.5-4 inch bubbles for me.)
When making the rotors, I inflated the balloon till there was 1-1.5 inches left, not the 3 indicated in the instructions. I wanted to use up as much as I could of the balloon for the rotors.

To take the pictures, I attached a piece of string to the rotors and hung up the helicopter. A helicopter belongs in the air anyway. :) For a kid's birthday party, if it fit your theme, I imagine you could hang the helicopters (and perhaps some airplanes?) around the room as decorations for a nice touch.

[ Instructions from Professor Wonder ]

Basic twists

There are three basic twists to know when you start balloon twisting. The first two most basic ones are the loop twist and lock twist, followed by the pinch twist, which you'll eventually want to learn. I may post some pictures of them and describe them at some point, but I found the below web site does a pretty good job of illustrating them.

The lock twist, loop twist, and pinch twist are the first three listed, followed by some more advanced twists.

Check them out here.