How to Make a Barbell Body for Balloon Animals and Characters

Balloon modeling is as fun for the artist as it is for the audience, using simple twists to transform standard balloons into a variety of fun shapes and characters. There are many ways to make bodies for your balloon characters; however, with a few tricks you can add a new body style, the barbell body, to your bag of tricks.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Long balloon

1. Inflate a long balloon so that there is just 1 to 2 inches of uninflated balloon at the end. Twist a small 1-inch balloon into the knotted end to begin your character body. Barbell bodies are easy to create and can be used as the base of a number of balloon characters.

2. Make 2 3-bubble roll throughs. Twist the balloon about 5 inches below the small bubble and then fold the extra balloon over until it touches the first bubble. Twist the balloon together with the small bubble and the fold it 1 more time towards the end of the doubled bubbles.

3. Pinch the balloon where it is even with the first 2 bubbles and twist. Now push the third bubble through the center of the first 2 to secure it in place.

4. Turn to the opposite end of the balloon and squeeze a bit to fill out the excess portion of the balloon. Twist a small 1-inch bubble and then repeat the process to make a second 3-bubble roll through. Use the upper roll through as your body's head and the lower as the body.

5. Connect arms, legs, hats and other features to your barbell bodies to develop your own unique balloon characters.