Beating Inflation–A Tutorial

When Mel and Shane got married in our church a few years back, they had balloons all down the aisle.

This weekend, two more friends are getting married [in another church] and decided on a similar arrangement. They have managed to order the helium balloons in the right colours – but there was a problem about getting the weights which keep them from floating to the ceiling. Could I help?

I just happened to have a balloon weight in the kitchen […it was a Teachers’ Christmas Meal in 2011, and my friends had ‘liberated’ the balloons and tied them to their wrists for the disco. The waitress was going to throw the weight away, and I asked for it. This is why my house is full of clutter…] I unwrapped the weight, and found it weighed 161 grams. Bob and I thought hard…

We needed to recreate the small pyramid shapes

We took 18 silicone pudding moulds into the garage and gave them a light coating of sunflower oil.

Then Bob mixed the concrete and we made a batch of concrete ‘puddings’

 

When they had set, I cut out some circles of thin foil [these were quite large – about 12” in diameter] and bent 36 bits of wire in pairs [these were twist ties which came with a roll of plastic bags]

I used one tie to make a loop [to attach the balloon strings] and the other was to gather up the foil round the concrete lump [which looked rather like a little sandcastle]

I decided against cutting the top into fronds – but think our eighteen home-made balloon weights look just as good as the shop-bought ones. And they cost a lot less than £1 each!