Should I add ballooning to my business?

Hi,
I've recently started my face painting business and it's going pretty well so far. I'm also offering glitter tattoos because I live in hot and humid south Texas and there are a lot of pool parties in the summer....I'm looking at offering balloon animals too. There seems to be a short supply of children party entertainment, so the face painting and glitter tattoos are good but so unknown here I think some parents are wary to pay my extremely affordable prices. I wonder if adding balloon art may be a nice option and a way to increase business and raise my prices....I guess my question is how hard is it to learn, and have any of you found a dramatic increase in business since you began offering balloon twisting too?

If anyone has any suggestions or what the minimum is that I need to get started...which I imagine is a bag of balloons, I'd appreciate the input. Thanks!

I can't say much about a relative increase because I started with balloons before face painting, but I do get a lot of business as a twister. Expenses are less initial investment, but higher over time because they don't go as far as face paints do and you can't charge as much per balloon sculpture as you can per face. But it's another option. Most people charge about $1 per balloon in the sculpture when charging per balloon, so it gives the cheap people an option rather than just walking by you.

As far as materials, get some GOOD balloons Qualatex or Betalatex, not the crap from the party store. You will also need a pump (I only know a handful of people that can mouth inflate and most wouldn't do it for a long event because you'd probably pass out). I LOVE the Qualatex red pump, but there are giant floor ones if you really get into it. I'm tempted to get a bigger one now, but my twisting has developed so much by knowing how many red pumps to put into a particular design rather than looking at the length of the tail... it would be a hard transition for me.

Hi. I have just started balloon twisting. I've spent hours watching youtube and sorting through what i like and what i think i can do.
I would say buy yourself a pump and a bag of qualatex 250count and maybe some 5" white rounds it might set you back $40 or so, but have a go and see if you like it.
I have decided to keep going with it. But am just going to offer a couple of pre-made designs to go along with my face painting to start with, til i get a bit faster and the word gets around. I havent done a gig yet but have a couple coming up.
I have also been giving a balloon animal/wand to my birthday kid at my gigs as a special gift.
I have just spent a few hundred dollars to get an array of balloons to set up my kit properly and i anticipate that money will come back fairly quickly as no one much does it in my area either.
Also if you can find someone to sell to you at wholesale prices that will make your operating costs much cheaper.
I read here on the forum here somewhere that some balloons are particularly affected by the heat (i think it was either the jewel or the crystal??)
I say if no one around you does it, you have a gold mine out there to discover, so go for it!

the jewel and crystal colours are much more likely to pop than the more opaque colours.... all of them are affected by heat and time. They are made from natural latex rubber which is a tree resin and they biodegrade at the same rate as an oak leaf so you cannot stock up for the next 5 years, at best a bag of balloons will only be good for about a year before they all start popping every time you try to use them. Store them in a cool, dark place if you can and try not to leave them in your car during the summer. I've done it several times and they are ok, but it's just one more thing that can weaken the balloons and shorten their lifespan.

Go to youtube or balloon-animals.com and watch some videos... once you have 10 or so one or two balloon sculptures down, you are ok to go to an event and be reasonably sure that you'll be able to twist more stuff than uncle joe who knows how to make poodles. Then there's always the jokes that have the kids asking for all kinds of crazy stuff and the clown says, "sure I can! as long as your astronaut is wearing a dog costume today!"... everything turns into a poodle ;o)

Summer time and my gigs are picking up...my dad just retired and has been board around the house so I think I may have a new balloon twister to add to my festivals and such....if his hands can work the balloons. He's finding more and more things don't work the way they ought to as he ages. I still want to learn it too. Any suggestions of who to buy balloons from? I checked out the website above and it looks like a great resource on videos.

Um...there was a post a while back and someone had found who had the most reasonable shipping these days .

I just went with LaRocks cause they had the most reasonable shipping for me. HOWEVER.....

I had ordered a package of 160 balloons for starting to practice a package of 260 balloons and a red pump okay?

it gets to my house and it has only the package of 160Q in it no invoice. I was like what the heck?

So we had to leave that afternoon for vaca and I call the company about it when we got back.

A day later I get a voice mail to return Helen's call.

I of course am at my paying job so I can't even check my voice mail until am leaving work and of course by that time they are closed.

The next day I call them and find out that someone had tampered with my package and stolen my invoice the pump and my package of 260Q balloons. Really? balloons? I had paid through paypal so I'm not really worried about anyone stealing my card info, but it perplexes me nonetheless.

Helen at LaRocks was super sweet and promptly send me a new package of 260Q balloons and a new pump. So all is well.

glad they fixed it all for you... and that should be enough to start trying it out to see if it's something you like to do.

I'm glad as well! They very well could have said....um sucks to be me. LOL

We have about oohhhhh 20 balloon swords lying around my house. Right now my 20 yr stepson that JUST moved back in....that in and of itself is a loong story and my 7 yr old and my 11 yr old love to chase each other around the house with them.

the 11 yr old twists pretty good swords. I'm teaching her dogs and flowers next.

I'm getting pretty good at cats and giraffes now.

Sorry, didn't mean to hickjack your thread.....

okay to order try
http://www.lpballoons.com/store/pc/
or
http://www.larocks.com/
and see who has the cheapest shipping

I get my balloons from Rainbow Balloons. I usually wait and place a big order to get best pricing and little or no shipping costs. Also I never order my balloons in the summer so they are not sitting in some delivery truck that is 200 degrees. Think about upcoming holidays and stock up on those colors also.

I'm totally dragging the thread from the depths, but I wanted to add that LaRocks also sells face paint which might help you get to the $150 free shipping range more quickly.