Amy’s Free Ideas
Many dollar stores and party goods stores have these handy balloon sticks. They have plastic cups on the ends that hold the tied end of the balloon to the top of the stick without the balloon flopping over to one side. I haven’t been able to come up with a home-made version of these because if you try to tie a balloon to the end of a dowel, they tend to flop over to one side.
If you want a big bouquet like the one shown, you will need longer sticks because the balloon sticks are only long enough to make 2 layers. of balloons, which is fine for a smaller bouquet. I found super long plastic straws, which were just the right size for the balloon sticks to slide into. The problem was that these straws were too weak to hold the balloons straight up. I solved the problem by fastening them together in 2 or 3 places, with twist-ties (plastic coated wire). The combined strength of them tied together held them straight. Dowels may work as well, you just need to figure out how to fasten them together--one option might be to tape the balloon stick to the side of the dowel so the cup sits above the top of the dowel.
This “bouquet” has 4 layers: at the top is one balloon, next layer down has 3 balloons, next layer down has 5-6 balloons, and the lowest level has 4 balloons. It depends on how big of a bouquet you want and how big the balloons are, so experiment to see how it looks, and keep adding balloons where you find a hole.
I left one straw uncut for the balloon on the top layer. Then I cut the straws to hold the balloon sticks on the next 2 levels. The bottom row was the only level that I used the balloon sticks by themselves.
An empty soda bottle makes a perfect vase because the small neck holds the sticks together. Put water in the empty soda bottle--about one third full, to make it heavy, because the bouquet is top heavy--it will easily topple from as little as someone walking by. Put the sticks in the filled soda bottle, then add the balloons.
You can put the balloon bouquet in a vase instead of a coke bottle, but you may need to tie the sticks together so they don’t flop to the side because the mouth is wider. Also, make sure it is a really heavy vase since it is so tipsy.
A coke bottle is not very beautiful, so you can hide it with a tube of poster board. Color coordinate it with your other decorations if you want, or decorate it with wrapping paper, or write a message on it.
Add tissue paper to the top of the tube--to make it look more festive, and to cover the top of the bottle.
Optional:
Add some curling ribbon for a finishing touch (pull one blade of scissors along the back side of the ribbon to make it curl.)
At a dinner table, you don’t need such a big bouquet. This one has one balloon on the top level, and 3 balloons on the bottom layer.
In a large room, even a large balloon bouquet does not seem very big.
