November 25 - Pilchard

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."

~ Pablo Picasso

About 13 years ago, Nat asked for a balloon.

Today I'm thankful for Rob Driscoll.

Rob is the first balloon artist I ever saw commit to a full 365-day project, and it started with this cat.  His blog was a mix of creativity, discipline and a that bit of magic that occurs when you show up and put in the work day after day.

If daily art works any kind of muscle, then Rob is one of the reasons I started exercising.

(view other cats)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Rob Driscoll:

July 15 - Jojo Cat

"As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat."

~ Ellen Perry Berkeley

A certain amount of cat hair in my food is just a fact of life at this point.

I don't push them off the counter. I let them take an interested sniff from what I eat. I realize I am the problem.

Worth it.

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The tiger is one of Tobi Twists's Jojo Cuties, I thought "big cat" and a lion might work as well but ended up going for smaller ears because of the mane.

(view other tigers, lions or jojos

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Other balloons by and inspired by Tobi Twist:

April 3 - Pig, RA-bot, Owl and Cat Loop-Heads

“Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.”

~ Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Here are a few other Loop-Heads I made while playing around with Mr. Boma's head design.

I really like the way the owl turned out, I feel like this face design could work with most anything and so much of the overall look of the balloon is what you do with the body.

To whit, I think the RA-bot body should have been more like the cat body with those hoppy back legs, and the cat should have probably just been a standing "Garfield" body.

As with every balloon technique we explore here, I had to try my hand at a pig.


View other: owls, cats, rabbits, bunnys, pigs

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Other Mr. Boma inspired balloons:

December 5 - Bopup Cats

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

~ Terry Pratchett

Lessons were learned over and over again while making Chibicoro, but apparently I needed another one.  What you're seeing here is actually the simplified form of something I was over-complicating -- my first attempts at making a Bopup cat had back legs, a head section - ears.  It was losing the charm of what it was.

It takes a little bit of finesse to "do the move" to make these.  So to try and keep from messing up the final attempt, I can easily attempt the ink art on a round before putting it in the wobbledy one.

The secret here is the one without the claw marks on the paws is the prototype and not actually a bopup.  It had to be placed in between the grey and pink to be held still.

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Other balloon designs by and inspired by Matt Falloon:

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December 2 - Matt's Frumpal Cat

Black cat you're beautiful,
Why does everybody run away
Has anybody told you, I care
Has anybody told you, I love you

~ Ziggy Marley Black Cat

For balloon art, Matt Falloon has a knack for creatively pushing the bounds. Each of his balloon concepts that I've shared on this blog are a good example of that - his OCD designs were a physical challenge to complete, his flowerbuds were a new an interesting way to create a 4 legged creature, his Pico's make a perfect tiny accessory for a gift or a hair tie and remain one of my favorite things to build with the random balloons I keep in my car while waiting for my sons to be done with their after school activities.

Recently Matt travelled to a few select places with both Christopher Lyle and David Brenion on what was dubbed "The Magical Twistery Tour". Unfortunately none of the stops was close to me so I was unable to attend, but one of the things Matt offered as incentive to attend was the first of his Frumpal designs - this cat.

Now I would love to explore Frumpal creations here, but I've been told it's still something he is teaching at conventions and there might be a DVD instructions at some point (take my money!), and I respect his intellectual property. But since he taught and released a video for making this cat, I asked for and was given permission to show my attempts at it.

Note that these were done without a tutorial and are based on the images that both he and other people shared after attending the tour, I have since learned a few things that he does with greater efficiency than I did fumbling around.

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Other balloon designs by and inspired by Matt Falloon:

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November 13 - Garfield

“I hate Mondays.”

~ Garfield

This is my attempt at making Nao Osaka's Garfield.

I believe I may have jumped down the wrong rabbit hole on this one.  Instead of trying to channel Nao's style, I tried to copy the way he created this form. 

He did a fantastic job, the way he gets the balloons to wrap around and form the main face structure caused me to scrap and try over and over again, popping and creating a Frankenstein-ish mess.  I started fresh after a number of attempts and made this one, but I'm still not 100% satisfied with how it ended up.

Nao truly is a master of capturing form with balloons.

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Other balloon designs by or inspired by Nao Osaka:

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October 18 - Pip's Cat

If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember.

~ Terry Pratchett

This is another one from Pippity Pop's Loving Line Work instructions.  Pip does another great job at showing a quickly made, yet attractive cat. One of the common problems when making something with four legs is that unless they are attached to each other in some way, they splay out - I really like the way Pip keeps everything tight to the body and builds only the important features.

I felt a black cat was again one that was somewhat appropriate for the upcoming holiday, but when I used all black, it didn't read very well and I changed the nose to pink and added the white paws.

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Other balloon designs by Pip:

September 3 - Two Faced Hello Kitty

Over here is Clay Aiken, there's a side of bacon
And I'm in a torpedo fighting with Satan
Next to hello kitty and a zombie ice skating and wait
It's Ronald Reagan

~ Weird Al Yankovic Another Tattoo

The next in the line of two faced balloons by David Brenion is this Hello Kitty.

I find Hello Kitty a bit fascinating in that it's something I remember from my youth, how is it possible for a license to sustain itself for so long?!  Viva La Internet, lets find out.

Hello Kitty was created in 1974 by Yuko Shimizu for the company Sanrio, and embodies the Japanese kawaii style (cuteness). Sanrio states that there is no mouth because they want people to project their own feeling on it, to "be happy or sad together with Hello Kitty."

David shows how to make the blue version, I didn't do much else from the base form but make it in pink

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Other two-faced balloons:

Show All David Brenion Designs

August 12 - Nao's Cat

As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat.

-- Ellen Perry Berkeley

The next class was Nao Osaka teaching us his new cat.

Once again he did a great job teaching an advanced design to a room full of people.  He provided a sheet that shows the first umpity-three steps to get you going.

Because it's Nao-style, I did build a few 160 versions as well.

The grey with blue eyes was built with Nao, the orange was later in my room after scarfing some quick tacos.  The brown was about 5am the following morning and the grey with green eyes was built and left at an Air BnB I stayed at recently.

I kept meaning to build one with straight front legs - I think it would look great with a normal cat sitting pose.

Even though Nao is a master of a woven body style, here he shows something different - this is a stylish, small, fairly quickly constructed, efficient unwoven form.

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Other balloon designs from Bling Bling Jam 2017:


Other balloon designs from Nao:

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June 21 - Loopy Cat

Siamese Cats have a way of staring at you. Those who have walked in on the Queen cleaning her teeth will know the expression.

~ Douglas Adams

Once again I got to experiment with some different limb styles for these Loop the Loop designs by Tony Twist and this cat.  Though Loop the Loops are primarily designed to be upright so it can attach to a hat base, you aren't so limited when creating a sculpture.

First I made the sitting cat using the form and colors Tony shows, but I thought I would try for a Siamese look with the standing form - in hindsight I should have probably made the cheeks beige as well.

Cats have a little extra bit to their legs that is tough to capture, they walk on their toes so it appears like there is an extra leg section that is actually the main body of their foot.  The feet I used don't really reflect that, they look like floppy socks to me.

This was a rare instance of getting a photo of our cat, Tosh - normally he wants nothing to do with balloons, but he was quite content to let me pet him in between attempts to take this photo of the cat council.

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Other Loop the loop designs:

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May 20 - Geo Babies

Sometimes the littlest things take up the most room in your heart.

~ Winnie the Pooh

I was browsing images in the balloon forums recently when I stumbled across some images posted by ‎Rosaleen Burkholder.  Probably because of this recent geo-playing I've been doing, I recognized them as inverted geos.

Rosaleen does a great job at making these into cute little quick creations, yet they are probably the easiest balloon I've ever made, there is not one twist!  Yet still, being a geo it has an interesting abnormal shape, and the ears add to the effect. The only bit of struggle is that it's more difficult to draw on such an under-filled balloon as it tends to move with the sharpie.

Rosaleen credits Jeanine Von Essen Sharpen.  I have used a couple of her designs on this site already (link), so I did a little digging through her photo archives.  These are attributed to a mini-jam in San Jose around November 2012.  Jeanine does sell some PDFs on her website (link) but it's a bit hard to tell if these are currently part of any collection.

I'm now down to the last few of these extra green (and I still have bags of emerald green and whites!).  I guess I sort of stumbled into "geos" being the second balloon concept for May - I will need to go back through time and see if I can correctly label any previous geo based creations.  Though it's not a concept in itself, the unique balloon shape really gives an interesting workspace to create with.

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Other posts specifying geos:

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March 28 - Playful Kitty

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”

~ Robert A. Heinlein

This kitty is an Anastasya Sokol design from her "Figures from balloons for modeling" tutorials (link).  I can't get enough of these tutorials, one of my favorite things to build are detailed or creative decor pieces like these.  I've built a bunch of cats, but never a calico (?) not one as playful as this one, having it on it's back and playing with a ball of yarn was brilliant.

I've only built four (of nineteen total) from this particular set, but I can easily see myself building all of them.  Each is very well stylized.  In this one, Anastasya seemed to be measuring things very carefully against a ruler, but she shows everything quite clearly and I was able to eyeball match the sizes and keep up with her.

I brought this in to work today.

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Other posts with Anastasya's designs:


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November 19 - Pico Kitties

“Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them.”

~ Jim Davis

We go from gigantic turkey to a micro kitty.  These are the next designs from Matt Falloon's Picos DVD.

Picos are a fun challenge to get right.  You don't have the same flexibility as you might when making a larger size balloon.  One of the things you need to learn when twisting is that it's not only the size of a balloon, but it's the relative pressure you need to be in control of when you are creating things.  A tight 1" bubble that you pinch twist looks very different than a soft 1" bubble than you pinch twist.

When you are working with Picos, you are working with the smallest sized balloons making tiny adjustments - it's much less of an exact science and more of a "feel".  It actually forces you to twist the way I believe you are meant to - watch the video first, then attempt (rather than trying to twist along with the video).  I built the designs that Matt showed on the DVD, but also had a corny idea of doing an invisible cat and giving it a Cheshire grin.

Hello Itty Bitty	Kwazii Cat - Octonaut meets Micronaught
I'm taking these mini-cats to meet Minnie Mouse

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Other posts with Matt's designs:


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