In addition to balloon twisting, and the Big Balloon Show, Smarty Pants also offers custom made balloon decor and centerpieces to match any party theme.    From 1st birthday parties to weddings to bar mitzvahs, I’ve created custom balloon work for every conceivable event.  But even after twelve years of making balloons, I still get requests to create balloon characters I’ve never made before.

For balloon decor, my motto is “What You can Conceive, I can Achieve!”

To help clients visualize how their balloon vision might look in reality, I can work up balloon prototypes for balloons I don’t currently have in my online balloon portfolio.

Recently I received a request to make an “Animal” balloon from the ever-popular The Muppets.  In the past, I’ve made a Kermit the Frog balloon centerpiece as well as a Beaker, but never an Animal, so this afternoon I sat down to create something new.

 My first step is to find a suitable image of the character to give me a handy guide to work from:

My next step is to create the Animal Muppets figure out of balloons.  I don’t always capture the character on the first try – the Animal was particularly tricky since his face has some intricate details.    The first two attempts weren’t quite right, but I feel I captured the character fairly well on the third try.

 Finally, I worked up an image to send to the client, to give them an accurate representation of how their balloon centerpiece will look.   Since this was just a prototype, I only created the Animal figure out of balloons. For the final piece, I’ll create both the Animal as well as the drum set out of balloons.

Often people don’t realize how much work and effort goes into making professional, custom made balloon sculptures – I try to make it look easy, but it’s not always the case! 

For more information about Smarty Pants and custom balloon decor in the Chicago area, check out my website, www.SmartyPantsWorld.com