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 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.
*Note: There is a separate page listing blogs I have commented on, in the right sidebar.
*Note: There is a separate page listing blogs I have commented on, in the right sidebar.
