Advertisement
Red Back Spider
Pretty nifty, hey! Scott created this without _ANY_ instructions Okay, so this journal isn't about travelling but it is about a quest and that's close enough, right?
A quest.... to find the balloonman within.
Every week, Kate's work has a Friday Challenge and every week, the staff take it in turns to organise it. This week, Kate drew the short straw and boy, will they be sorry :P *Kate laughs evilly* Taking inspiration from the "Pointless Bit Of Fun" segment on Friday Night Games (a tv show in Aus that was showing a couple of months ago), Kate's throwing down the gauntlet to her fellow workmates and challenging them to find the balloonman within. The challenge will consist of two parts - the first challenge is to see who can blow up the most balloons in 2 minutes (Note: These are not your ordinary balloons, these are the delightfully long skinny balloons used for making balloon animals and they are DAMN HARD to blow up!). The second part of the challenge is to make the most impressive balloon animal/object/thing in 10 minutes. (Any entries for sausages, worms, snakes, etc are ineligible for a prize, of course.)
Not one to take her duties lightly, Kate decided that a
Balloon Artist Extraordinaire
Scott and the menagerie of animals he created. test run must be performed before the event so Kate and Scott settled themselves in the loungeroom the night before for a night of balloon artistry. After a couple of attempts, we gave up on trying to blow the balloons up manually, as it was damn near impossible for us newbies. Instead, we just used the pump provided in the kit to blow up the balloons - MUCH easier. With many an exclamation of "what the ... ?", "huh?", "how the...?" and a few others we won't repeat here (you never know if there are kiddies reading) plus a few exploding animals later, we eventually managed to master a few of the examples in the book. This wasn't good enough for Scott though, and he decided to try and make a spider. Not just any spider though, this spider had to be a redback spider with a nice red stripe down his back. :S (cue awed silence.... That's quite a challenge with no instructions and no ballooning experience!!) It ended up taking him around 40 minutes all up with a bit of trial and error but you've got to admit, the end result is mighty impressive!
Now, the Friday
Scott's Menagerie
Scott's works of art.
Clockwise from front left: rabbit, redback spider, poodle, rabbit, moose (red), mouse, dachshund challenge is going to be a bit harder in that a) people will not get a chance to practice, b) they will get absolutely NO instructions, and c) there's a time limit. Kate's going to be nice though and is going to blow the balloons up for them using the pump (as we highly doubt that anyone will succeed in the first part of the challenge) but other than that, people are going to have to use their imagination. It'll hopefully be a lot of fun and laughs and Kate will try and get photos of some of the results to put up here.
After Scott's monumental effort (aka the spider), we decided that we'd had enough ballooning for the night so we packed up our works of art for Kate to take along for inspiration at the challenge and hit the sack. (Note: the spider won't be going along as an example, as we didn't want to risk it getting damaged! Instead, it's now the centrepiece on our dining table 😊 ).
Until our next blog, please enjoy the fruits of our labour 😊 (and please make sure you ooh and ahh lots - we did pretty
Balloon Artist in Training
Kate and her attempts at balloon artistry.
Clockwise from left: cat (yellow), dog, swan, parrot on a swing, black sheep, white mouse, dachshund gosh darn good for inexperienced balloon artists!).
*************************************** UPDATE by Kate 29/05/2006 ***************************************
Well, the Friday challenge was an absolute hit. Everyone was super keen and had a heap of fun. Amazingly enough, there was actually one person who was able to blow up some of the balloons (though he'd had prior experience). It was very amusing to watch everyone else giving it their best shot though. *giggle*
People were very ... creative... in their efforts and first prize ended up going to a dragonfly, with 2nd prize going to a flying dog. (I got one of the other staff members to be a guest judge, as it was just too hard to pick!). Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get any pics as I was too busy running around providing assistance (blowing up more ballooons, instructing on how to twist the balloons so that they kept their shape, and answering numerous other questions, etc etc). I did get some pics of the aftermath though (there's still a few balloons lying around the office). At the end, I let people with kids pick a couple of balloons from the bag of examples I'd brought in so that they had
Kate's black sheep - Take 3
We mourn the death of the first sheep and the second sheep was gravely injured in an explosive accident and is currently in intensive care. :( Poor sheep... something to take home if their entry didn't exactly work out 😉
I won't be doing any more ballooning for a while, as I have to wait for my finger to heal before I can tie any more balloons (it's amazing how much damage balloons can do to one's fingers though I did blow up and tie over 40 of them :S).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.085s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 53; dbt: 0.0585s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Lynn
non-member comment
Menagerie
I love your blog and the photos are great. Your practice examples are hanging in my classroom and have had numerous comments from children.