Tutorial: Sculpting Balloons

Hello Jungle,

time to present the result from this week's tutorial voting.
We had 10 votes for "Balloons" and 9 votes for "Dino". What a close decision.
Thanks for your voting!



Well, Roman will write the article now and after a weekend packed with his first MV's Jar's Advanced Class, followed by two day private coaching he is quite happy about this decision. The smaller article of these two :)

Enjoy the article and be inspired!

If you want to keep track with an overview on what has happened so far 
please check this link!

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FOREWORD
Once in a while my girlfriend is doing a miniature. One in three years you can say. She started a project were she was in need of balloons and we documented the progress. Of course the project is not finished yet. Even the balloons will get some more work I guess as soon as she wants to finish the project.

This article is aimed for your inspirational nerves in your brain. Of course you can exactly follow it in the way we show, but I think that you might be able to find your own solutions to specific points, might use another putty and so on. Just be inspired by it!

SCULPTING BALLONS
As my girlfriend mentioned the idea of balloons in her project which will happen mainly in the air I introduced her to BeeSPutty Plastic. 

She started forming some balloon-shaped balls (There are many shapes!!) with it and thought about how to fix them properly to her project idea, which mentioned before will happen mostly airborn.
Balloons often come with a string, so we decided to to not use casual string and fix it with superglue. Why? a) Superglue Massacre and b) it would not be so easy to bring them in the shape she wants. We decided for a metal bar.

We baked the prepared balloons and after they cooled down she was able to put the metal bar inside the hole and glue it with a tiny drop of superglue:

Next step was cleaning up the area with additional putty.

Smooth it.

We are still missing something. We all know how an air-filled balloon looks and we all know it all starts with a shrivelled something. When you breathe or pump air in it you have to knot it in the end so the air will stay in place and kids have fun playing with balloons or cats are scared because of playing with it. We are missing the tiny knot part in the end.

My girlfriend decided to add this with some additional putty. 

Like this:

Many more to prepare.
That is where she stopped working on the project about two or three years ago. I hope she will continue it as the idea is just wonderful.



CONCLUSION
It definatly will do, but I think if you think about scale the string seems a little bit to thick. On the other hand it is good to bend, form and shape compared to other solutions we tried to find. It is also stiff and the little weight of the putty balloons does not drag it down. I think there are many other solutions. In your head, on your table, in your creation. Give it a go.

Some more inspiration - Raffa fixed this with thin wire too:

Same here - Roman fixed these with thin wire.

 Happy Ballooning!