Stage Two (Part Two): Heading Towards the Highway

Today's itinerary advice: Don't get ahead of yourself, or you might have to backtrack.

WEDNESDAY

I decided it was time to start making some balloon animals. Since I have made them before, I wanted to see how much I still remembered. Inflating the balloon with the pump was easy; tying the balloon a bit of a struggle.

The first dog was going smoothly until I got to the tail and somehow poked a hole in the balloon - it didn't pop, but it deflated quickly, along with my hopes of being a balloon master in no time. 

The second dog was more or less a success, though it took nearly five minutes of twisting, re-twisting, and extremely loud squeaks. (Those squeaks combined with a fear of popping the balloon made for some awfully amusing facial expressions.)

Feeling pretty confident with the dog, I figured I would get a feel for how easy it is to design my own. I tried to make a flower; it turned out a bit more experience was needed first.

(A tetrahedral flower?)

THURSDAY

I expanded upon the basic dog shape to make relatively similar animals.

Learning the elephant took about five minutes the first time, going step-by-step through the instructions. Since the proportions seemed a little odd to me, I made a second one, trying not to refer back to the instructions.

Learning the rabbit took about three minutes. This time, I read through all the instructions first and then just made it. It was much more efficient, but probably wouldn't work so well for more complex designs.

 Learning a flower was important because that is a common request with a very different structure from animals. I made it along with the video tutorial. It took about eight minutes. The petals weren't quite the same sizes, but hopefully that can be fixed with more practice.

FRIDAY

Learning the monkey took much longer than I expected. It wasn't very difficult, but I think I re-did the proportions for the body about seven times.

Learning the teddy bear was actually pretty difficult. I re-made the head three times, and even then I wasn't sure if it was going to stay. Near the end, I realized I over-inflated the balloon. Usually when you inflate a balloon, you're supposed to leave a little tail at the end, so that as you twist along the other end, the air that's pushed down doesn't make the balloon pop. So in this case, I used this trick that the YouTube balloon animal guy showed in his flower-tutorial above. You twist a little bubble at the very end, pinch it between your thumb and middle finger, snap, and it pops! Then you let out a bit of air and tie it off. I actually practiced on the partially-deflated dog from before, and then used it on the bear.

Learning sword version 1 and version 2 were a relief after everything else. Looking back, I probably should have done them first... I also altered the designs a little based on personal preference and/or inability to make it properly.

SUMMARY

I learned four types of twists: the basic twist (just one twist anywhere), the loop twist (refer to dog legs), the fold twist (refer to elephant ears & flower petals), and the pinch twist (refer to monkey ears).

I prefer written instructions over video tutorials, mostly because I've never particularly enjoyed learning skills by video. 

The hardest part for me is probably making the proportions right. For example, I'll twist the legs, then realize that either one is shorter than the other, or they're both disproportionate to the head.

I have realized that memorizing the steps, after I've successfully completed them at least once, is not difficult. I do, however, need to absolutely master it before I can move on to any sort of multitasking (walking, talking, those sorts of things).

Excitingly, I had an immediate destination for the balloon animals I made. Friday night was my church's Chinese New Year celebration, so we brought them as rewards for the kids who participated agreeably. It was absolutely adorable. One little girl was very sad when her younger brother popped half of hers, so I quickly made her a new one; it was so cute how much she was entertained by it.

We have finally gotten on the road, with a few bumps along the way - stage three takes us straight to the highway. 
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