How to Make a Balloon Garland: An Easy DIY

Creating a Balloon Garland: Gathering Necessary Items

There are only a few things you really need in order to create a balloon garland. Here are the items you’ll see in this video.

Balloons

I like to create my balloon arches with about 2-3 main theme colors, along with 3-4 supporting (more neutral) colors. You can do this however you would like. You could even make a balloon arch with a single color! I find most balloon arches I see have multiple. You can find your balloons as a kit on Amazon (just search for them, there are a lot out there). Or you can create your own variety.

One benefit to creating your own mix is that you can get larger balloons. After using a bunch of kits from Amazon, I found that I was ending up with a lot of leftover smaller balloons. I have found that my favorite size balloon for my balloon arches is 12″. My ultimate balloon arch happy place is a set of 12″ balloons to work with, along with some 6″ balloons to even it out along the way.

What if you’re not making a bunch of balloon arches like I am, but you just want to make one for a party and be done with it? GET A BALLOON ARCH KIT and call it good enough! I really love using a set of bigger balloons, but you can absolutely get by with a pre-made kit.

Balloon Arch Tape

There are plenty of people out there who swear by using string or some other contraption to hold their arches together. To each their own, but I’d much rather just use a roll of balloon arch tape and save myself some stress. This usually comes in those pre-made kits I talked about, but you can also buy a box of these to have on hand. They’re super cheap and in my opinion completely worth it.

Balloon Pump

Unless you have the lungs of an elite athlete, I would also strongly recommend getting a balloon pump to fill up all those balloons. I own this nifty little guy, and it’s not only super easy to use, but the cord tucks inside and it stores really well, too.

Stretchy Twine/Fishing Line

I like to hang my balloon arch with stretch bracelet/fishing twine. It makes it almost invisible in photographs, and does a great job of holding the arch up just how I’d like it. I bought mine from Hobby Lobby, but you can find it at pretty much any craft store, Walmart, or Amazon.

If You Make a Lot of Balloon Garlands (especially for Cake Smash Sessions)

Quilting Clips

This is the way I like to hang my balloon garlands for Cake Smash Sessions. I like to use a backdrop stand so that my balloon arch stays lower to the ground. This way the balloon arch is nice and visible behind the toddler. Since I do a lot of these sessions, I keep my stretchy twine tied to the horizontal bar of my backdrop stand. Then I use quilting clips to attach my balloon arch to the twine. This allows me to re-use my stretchy twine, and is faster because they’re already hung to be about the right relative height from one another to make a pretty arch shape.

How to Make a Balloon Garland: The Steps

1. Blow up the Balloons

I like to blow up about 5 of each color consecutively. That way I know I have about an even number of each color. For a Cake Smash-sized balloon arch, I typically need somewhere around 80 balloons. About 1 in every 4 or 5 balloons needs to be a small one. This won’t make a big difference right at the beginning, but as you keep adding balloons to the balloon arch tape, you’ll notice that they bunch up and you’ll either need to start skipping holes or you’ll need to add some small balloons.

2. Add Balloons to the Arch Tape

The arch tape will usually be secured with a piece of regular tape. Take that off and the tape will start to unravel.

You’ll notice holes along the tape- usually they look kind of like little snowmen. One large hole connected to a smaller hole. You’ll pull the knot of the balloon through that larger hole, then, when it’s through, you’ll slide it into the smaller hole to lock it in place. Keep attaching a single balloon into each hole in the balloon arch tape. Once you get going, it will begin creating a nice balloon arch. As the balloons start taking up more room, you will notice it seems like you need to skip a hole. Instead of skipping a hole, use a smaller balloon (or two) and then continue with your regular-sized balloons.

I usually end up doing about 4-5 large balloons, followed by a small balloon.

Continue adding your balloons until your arch is as long as you would like it to be.

3. How to Hang up your Balloon Garland

I like to use a backdrop stand and fishing twine/stretchy bracelet twine to hang up my balloon garlands for my Cake Smash Sessions. First I set up my backdrop stand, then I tie twine in about 5-7 places along the horizontal bar. The shortest twine will go right in the middle (to make the top of the arch). Then I space my twine out evenly around that twine on each side, gradually lengthening my twine as I go.

Using quilting clips, I clip the arch tape to the twine. Then I step back and make sure my alignment is correct. If not, I can unclip whichever piece needs to be higher or lower and fix my arch.

If the entire arch is too high or too low, I can adjust the height of the backdrop stand instead.

4. Fill In

If you have any spots that seem a little bare, you can use extra balloons to fill them in. Take a little tape (or tape dots that often come with balloon arch tape sets) and adhere the extra balloons wherever you need them. Tape dots also work well for attaching other embellishments to the balloon arch.

I hope you found this guide helpful and that you’re excited to start your balloon garland!

Creating a balloon garland is a lot easier than it seems. I can usually whip one of these out in about 45 minutes. The part that takes the longest is just blowing up all of the balloons! Please feel free to leave any questions below. I’m happy to help!