Hello everyone!
So, today we are here to make a hot-air
balloon craft
which you've seen an image of already.
So, for the first stage...
what we are going to need is we're going to need some newspaper or recyclable paper, some
PVA, a little bit of water.
If you have, which I'm sure you do, just a piece of plastic.
You can use a cup or a bowl if you want, but you know, just from soup or
courgettes or even some mince or
something like I that and rinse it out and we
can use a little tray like this.
The scissors, if you've got small little fingers,
you can get some help from someone; a parent, a responsible adult.
Paintbrush or some sponge which you will have been sent.
And a balloon. So what we're going to do first is we're going
to prepare the papier mâché. So we are going to use some newspaper.
If you fancy it, you could cut the
newspaper up into little squares. I quite like ripping the
paper. So, have you ever tried to rip
paper and sometimes it rips, and it
doesn't kind of rip in straight lines?
So we won't do it that way, we'll try and
do it this way, so it rips down into strips.
So, you kind of follow the grain of the paper.
It’s kind of therapeutic.
I like that ripping up.
Use a newspaper that your parents haven’t read, or HAVE read even. Now...
then what we're going to do, is we’re going to rip them into small bits.
Don’t be tempted to use big kind of strips
because when you go to try and put them on the balloon they crinkle on they don't cover
it really well, so what I’d ask is little,
little bits.
This size, and it knits together really well.
So, what I do as well is
I would try and rip as much as I can
before I get started because when you
start on the glue your hands are
gonna get a bit messy probably or your brush, it'll be wet.
So, I’m gonna try and get as much strips as we can.
So, now that we’ve ripped or cut up our pieces of paper and we have a pile of paper and they’re all
this size, we're ready for the next step.
So, next step is, we are going to dilute
our PVA. So you will have got a smaller
bottle of PVA than this, so what I'm
going to get you to do is I'm going to
get you to pour half of your bottle of
PVA into the container.
This is kind of fun 😀
There we go.
And, we are going to add half that same amount again of water.
So, we're going to get our
sponge or the brush you’ve been sent and we are gonna mix it up.
Keep mixing until...
it looks like milk. Don't drink it!
So, now we are ready to blow up the balloon.
It helps if you kind of stretch the balloon out a
little bit first, then you might need
help with this little bit, and then you take a
deep breath...
and another one.
Not too big... or it’ll burst. Is that looking like the
shape of a hot-air balloon?!
I think so, so we'll tie it off.
And there
we go!
So now we're ready to cover the balloon.
So we have our paper pile all
ripped and ready to go we have a balloon
and we have our
lovely PVA mix here.
So, we’re going to start covering the balloon. It's very important with this, that when
we start to cover the balloon that we keep a hand on the balloon because it will
start to get heavy and it’ll twirl over and you'll see that.
So keep a hand on the balloon. Paint some lovely PVA on the front there.
I like to do it this way...
but some might like to take their strip
and dip it in.
See, I'm encouraging you kids to get messy.
And stick it on like that. If you really don't want to use your hand
other little trick is; you can take your wet
brush and you can lift it up like that and paint it on.
So what we're trying to do is we're trying to
overlap the bits of papers so they knit
together and they form the one layer and
because we’ve used small bits of paper, it's sticking totally flush to the
surface of balloon and we'll get a nice neat shape at the end.
So it's very important that we cover
this balloon in its entirety.
Just leaving the bottom of the balloon poking out, the tie part, and then the other
thing is when you have the first layer
done then you go and you make a second layer
and then you go and you make a
third layer and when you've three layers on
and you can’t see any of the colour of the
balloon through it, then you are ready
for it the next step. So you just get
working away on this.
I waited one day for these three layers to dry,
but it was a very sunny day.
You may have to wait one or
two, but you'll know because it'll sound hard.
So it's dry. That's my three layers
now of papier mâché that's dried on it.
Now we are ready for the next stage
which is to cover it in tissue paper.
So I have a pickles jar, you could use a cup maybe or
some container just to rest my balloon. You can see the balloon is still intact
I haven’t burst it yet because I'm doing some decorating.
So I’m going to stand it up like that.
I have some of my PVA left over. If you don’t, that's when you can go to your second amount of PVA
and you can pour it out.
This time you don’t have to dive into the water if you don’t want to
or you can just put a little bit
of water in it if you want.
But if you have the first amount and you still have some left, by all means use that.
In your packs you would have been sent different coloured tissue paper, cool colours.
Greens and and Blues, and tones off that. So the idea is, we are going to decorate the hot-air balloon
to look like a sphere or look
like a representation of the world.
And we could imagine all the places, that
when these little bug-ies are gone,
we are going to travel to. So I have picked a bright green.
What I'm gonna do now is I might use the scissors for the tissue paper.
We can fold it up.
As you can see, I've just taken a sheet of the tissue paper and I am going to fold it up like this.
I’ll cut a square off this.
Then cut it
into strips...
and then cut it into small bits.
I want these to be quite small, even
smaller than the papier mâché in fact,
because I want them to knit together so all the colours blend.
Then I'm going to do the same with the blue pile.
And I might even take some more colours and give myself
some more choice as well.
And what we're trying to do is we're
gonna try and mix and match the
different shades of Blue I'm working on
at the moment. Pick up the paper and
layer them on top of one another. So much
like the papeir mâché, we are going to
need a few layers of this tissue paper
so we don't see the text of the lovely
newspaper. We don't want to read it, we
want to look at the beautiful colours.
Are we ready for it a little bit of land?
There we go.
And another little bit.
This is very relaxing and enjoyable, isn’t it?
Don’t worry if the tissue paper kind of crinkles up a little bit. That's the nature of this.
So just take your time with this, don't try and rush it too much. Just get into the zone.
Now we have covered the balloon in
lovely tissue paper, we are going to leave
this to one side for the moment. But if you
want to, if you want it extra shiny,
you can cover it now in an extra layer of
PVA and leave it aside and when it dries
it will be lovely and bright and shiny.
Right, so now we're gonna get going.
Now we're going to start making this balloon into a hot-air balloon.
We're gonna go back to the PVA. My
balloon hasn’t burst yet, so I'm gonna
burst it. Yours may have burst or shrunk down a little bit.
Wasn’t as dramatic as I thought it might be!
Can you hear that?
It’s hissing at me.
Now, so we have a hole. And now what I’m going to do is...
I have this this marker to hand so I'm going to use it so the red marker will show up.
You can really use anything.
You can use a pencil. If you want to be subtle you can use a biro. I'm using this just for my old eyes to be able to see it.
You would be quite young.
So what I'm going to do now is I'm going
to create a circle. I’ve just thought of this. To create the perfect circle. You can use a
cup that you have at home and you can
place it, try and place it straight
on the ends and have the balloon steady.
Facing north up.
And then what I'm gonna do is I'm
gonna create, draw. Can you see that?
The circle.
The responsible adult will cut the bottom of the balloon with a pair of sharp scissors (otherwise the balloon might collapse)
We're just gonna make a little dot for
the top, where we're gonna make a hole
for a pipe cleaner to suspend the
hot-air balloon.
The responsible adult will use a sharp scissors to make the hole at the top of the balloon.
Now we’re ready for the pipe-cleaner. We’re going to use a bright red pipe-cleaner.
You would have got a pipe cleaner in your pack.
If you're doing this at home and you don't have the (craft) pack, you can use this you
could even use a piece of string and
tie it in. But a pipe-cleaner is quite handy
because it has the metal that we can twist. So what I'm going to do is I'm
going to join both ends together. And I'm
going to push them through, just like that.
Feed it through the hole, like that, until
I'm happy with that size loop
it’s kinda like the size of my eye. And I'm gonna twist it inside.
So I’m going to get up there, and I’m gonna, with one hand, I’m gonna twist this into a nice little knot.
You can’t see it... it’s invisible.
But there we go.
Ta dah!!
There it is!
Next, what we're going to do is, we're
going to make the basket for the hot-air balloon.
I have a paper cup here that
I'm gonna cut down.
If you received the (craft) pack from the Séamus Ennis Arts Centre, you will have a little
brown seed pot which is a perfect size so
you don't need to cut that down.
For anyone who didn't receive
that pack, we're just gonna cut down a
coffee cup or you can use whatever you
have to hand. So, what I'm going to do is
I'm going to take off around this much,
so I will create a line all the way around.
Hmmm, do they meet together? Yes they do! So we do that and then what an adult will
probably have to do is we're just
going to cut along this line.
So, those of you who received the pack will have got the seed pot and it will be punched,
there will be four holes in it. But for those of you who don’t, who are using the coffee cup
all you need to do is make four little
dots...
opposite one another.
Have I done that? 1, 2, 3, 4, yes. And then... what I’m going to do is I’m going to
press in with the pen and just make a
little hole, like this.
So now we have holes in it we're
going to cover it with tissue paper
or the card that you got. You would have
either got Silver or Gold, to cover it with paper.
So we're going to go and use a little
bit of that. We’re gonna rip it up in the
same way that we ripped up the papier
mâché.
I still have some PVA left over from covering the balloon, but if you need to
put a bit more out you can.
And then what we're gonna do is, we're going to papier mâché a cup. So I'll put on a little bit
of PVA and then I'll start to, do you remember? Pick it up.
Until it’s all covered.
As you can see, I completely covered the basket in the tissue paper or the card
and I covered the end and I covered the 
inside so it's all the same colour and I
waited for it to dry obviously which
might take another few hours or the next day.
And then and went back in with a pen
or a scissors and I'm just pressing
through those holes again that you'd
already made with the biro, just to
make sure that they are visible for the
string for that stage.
So now, if you received the pack, you would have received two bits of coloured string.
Don't worry about the length for the
moment. What you need to do is just put the
ends together and fold them in half like
this. Just gripping the midpoint of both
pieces of string. Just here, like this.
So now with this midpoint I'm gonna tie the
string around this loop.
I’m going to tie it once...
and pull !
And I've had my Weetabix this morning because I’m going to pull
it really, really tight so it’s really strong and then I'm gonna tie it twice...
into a knot.
Now...
that is secure.
So, what I've done now here, is I’ve stretched an elastic band that
you would have got in your pack and I
just taken it, put it over the bottom,
stretched it up to further than the midpoint
down, and then I've threaded the string
through each point until it looks like
this on the top.
So we can see that it's
evenly placed and it’s pulled quite taut there, so the string is sitting flush
against the balloon shape. Now, we are
ready to glue this on.
Dip into your PVA. And what I want you to do, is liberally apply the PVA down the length of the string...
to hold it in place. And then when you've done one, you can even do a little dab
at the base of the pipe-cleaner and just
follow that down until you have all four done.
So now, the PVA is nice and dry.
We are ready to take off the elastic.
So, I'm going to pull that off here now...
and we're left with the lovely strings and they’re all stuck
along the surface.
So we're going to
gather up all four strings. Pull them
into a point, until it's even and I'm going to
suspend it, so I find the midpoint, and a
point in which to cut it. So I'm happy
kind of there.
Put it down.
I'm gonna get my scissors and I'm gonna give it a little hair cut.
There we go.
So now, we've finished the basket. We've
attached it with string.
There might be a little adjustment. So you want the basket to hang down.
So sometimes you might have to
re-tie it a little bit so that is hanging
away. So now what we're going to do is
we're going to decorate it with some of
the stickers you've got.
So here, I had some paper flowers that I cut out, so I can start with a big paper flower.
Take a bit of glue. Stick it on.
Take a paper
flower.
These are musical sheets I had.
And take a pom-pom. Stick it on. You’ll
have to wait for that to dry.
You can bend them forward...
like that.
You also would have got some
gold and silver paper. So what I have
here is I have kind of like a gold paper.
If you wanted to freehand some designs you can,
or get some help even if you
want. Or if you have a printer you can
print out and stick it on. So a simple
love heart. If you wanted to do a star,
a quick way to draw a star is you can draw
a triangle...
and you can draw a triangle
And when you cut along the edges, it will
be visible with the gold paper.
So now, with your stickers, or your free-hand shapes that you've made.
You can stick them, you can decorate them any way you want. Wherever you fancy sticking it on your hot-air balloon.
Stick it on.
Put a
lot of PVA on.
And...
There we go.
And while we're at it,  we should decorate the basket too.
So, never worry about putting too much PVA on.
It dries clear, so I put on a lot to make
sure there’s enough contact.
I have this nice cardboard flower.
And then... I found a little orange pom-pom.
There we go!
Here is our hot-air balloon. And I just think to finish it off; if you have a little doll...
or a little figurine that you can pop in.
So it can...
float away!
Thank you, and I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial!
