Does anyone know how to decorate a balloon or light them up?

Question

At a basketball tourney, they had large orange balloons that they had decorated to look like a basketball. It looked like they had used black tape or markers (not sure) to create the look. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could recreate that look that will last all day? Also, can you use Christmas tree lights to place with balloons in a balloon decoration to light it up? Thanks so much for any help!

Answer 1

First, most balloons will last all day, and longer... they don't lose air that quickly. If you're thinking about any helium in them lasting all day though, that's a bit different... though they will stay blown up a long time, the helium will dissipate more quickly, probably after a day. The only way to keep them up as high as possible once they begin to come down is to lessen the weight you have on them or attached to them.

If the balloon was perfectly round, it's possible that a "weather balloon" was used, and they are available online at least. There may be other totally round balloons available at party shops too, and many may be fairly close to round if not blown up fully or if blown up fully, but don't know about that.

There are many ways to decorate balloons. You can use markers but may have to go over the lines a few times to make them opaque enough.

You can use tapes of various kinds (masking tape, electrical tape, duct tape, etc.). Duct tape is sticky enough that you'd want to place it correctly the first time though, because may not be able to pull it off without popping some very blown up balloons.

You can also "hot glue" onto the balloon's surface strips or shapes of paper, yarn, or other materials or items, but you must use a LOW TEMP hot glue gun (...a high-temperature hot glue gun could be hot enough to pop the balloon, though you could try extruding some glue then letting it cool a bit before placing on the balloon if that's all you have).

As for lighting, don't know how easily you could put a light or lights inside a balloon but at any rate you'd want to use the cool lights like LEDs or mini-Christmas lights (rubber is fairly heat tolerant, but those put out almost no heat at all).

It's possible that you could even buy a very small LED light (like for a keyring, etc,), turn it on, and drop it into a large balloon before blowing it up... it should last many hours, but you may not be able to control the direction of the light (and the "white" LED's are often a bit bluish, etc.).

If you're using helium though, you'd have to consider any weight you added.

Otherwise just placing a wad of xmas mini-lights under the balloon (and hiding them in some way) could work... or you might even be able to string the mini-lights underneath the black tape to hide them, but the light would still be shining into the interior of the balloon.


HTH,

Diane B.

Answer 2

Here is a site for led lights that are designed to go into balloons.
http://www.balloominator.com
As far as the balloons basket balls go, I don't know of anywhere that you can get what your looking for. My advice is to get the largest orange ones you can find. Inflate them, only to the ROUND shape, and draw the design with permanent marker.

Answer 3

lights would get to hot and use marker and glow sticks

http://www.glowrus.com/?ovmtc=content