Here’s the hot air balloon we made at Coombe Abbey for a 1st Birthday celebration. The basket was made using Quicklinks and we left the back open for children to walk in for that instagram photo.
This was part of a bigger decoration, you can see more examples of the theme below.
How to make a Hot Air balloon
So you might be wondering how the frame was made for this hot air balloon? Looks complicated doesn’t it… well if you take it apart you’d be surprised how simple it is.
The only real solid part of the structure is an aeropole base plate but rather than a single pin in the centre it has 4 pins – 1 in each corner. Then I added 4 poles and a simple Ali Rod circle to support a quicklinks ball.
A quick links ball is made using:
1 Ring of 10 balloons + 2 rings of 5 balloons
The 3 above rings are linked together with single Quicklinks and 5″. Obviously there’s twice as many balloons in the central 10 ring so you alternate up & down – to the top ring, to the bottom ring & repeat.
I then stretched un-inflated 260q’s between gaps in the quicklinks ball and forced 5″ & 11″ balloons under to get that organic rounded look.
You can see below I did a practice build but on the day it had to be made on site – giant hot air balloons don’t fit though doors or into vans.
