How to Make a Simple Balloon Flower

Balloons are Nice and Tricky

We just celebrated a birthday at our house, as you may have guessed from the Pandemic Birthday Party Tips I posted the other day.  And while doing this, I decided, last minute, of course, that I wanted to make a flower balloon. If I had planned ahead, I could have just ordered one like everyone else is doing, but I lost track of the day, so I had to quickly learn how to make a simple balloon flower.

This is mostly simple, so I am sure you can get this to work also!

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What You Need:

1. 6 Balloons – Any color will do, but if you want it to look like a flower, 5 balloons of one color and 1 of a different color.  You also want to make sure the 5 balloons are the size.
2. Balloon Pump – optional, but this really helps in a pinch.  Especially if you need to fill a bunch of balloons in a short time.
3. Ribbon – the color is optional.  I cut 7 pieces, 6 of the pieces were about 8-inches long, and the last one was about 12-inches long.
4. Cardboard – Optional
5. Patience!  This requires a bit of finesse, especially at the end, so you need the patience to make it work.
6. You do not need little helpers asking you what you are doing every step of the way.

Let’s Begin!

Pick Your Balloons!

If you are making a simple flower balloon, ideally, you want to pick one color to make it look like a flower, but you can do any number of colors if you wish. For simplicity, I used one color for the outer peddles and a contrasting color for the center.

Step 1, done!

Blow Up the Balloons

This is where the balloon pump really comes in handy.    When pumping the balloons, I counted the numbers of pumps to make the first balloon the size I wanted, in this case, 10 pumps.  Then, when pumping the other balloons, I just needed to pump 10 times each, and they all turned out roughly the same size.

Wait to pump the center balloon until later to make sure I got the right size.

Attach All the Balloons Together

This is where patience comes into play… If you try to grab the stem of all 5 balloons to hold them together, they do not form a flower. Some go up, and some go down, and generally, you have a bunch of balloons in some random shape. This is not a simple balloon flower.  

Tie a piece of ribbon onto the end of each balloon.  Do it in such a way so that the ribbon is even on each side of the knot.

Once you have all of the balloons tied up, using one side of the ribbon of 2 balloons (so you only have 2 pieces of ribbon in your hand, not 4), tie a knot into the ribbon.  However, you want the knot to be about 1-inch from the stem of the balloon.

Then, repeat this process with the remaining 3 balloons. 

If you hold the first balloon, all of the other balloons will hand down in a line.

Connect the last balloon ribbon to the first balloon ribbon.   Again, tying the knot about 1-inch from the stem of the balloon.

Make the Flower

Once you have all of the balloons tied together, you need to hold all the knots together. As you can see in my picture, I am pulling the balloons together just a bit more to make the balloons stay close like flower peddles, but not too close to make a bunch of balloons. This is the spot I am going to tie another knot with all of the ribbons. This is roughly the same spot where all of the previous knots were tied.

Inflate Center Balloon and attach

Inflate the center balloon. Before you tie the knot in it, check it against the size of your flower. The first balloon I inflated was not large enough, so it could not be used.

Again, I tied a ribbon to it, and I connected it to the other balloons.

Optional – Cardboard Insert

When assembling this simple balloon flower, I was unsure where to place it in the house.  So, I quickly cut a 3-inch cardboard circle out of an old cereal box and taped it onto the ribbons. This was simply to help the balloon flower keep its shape.    

And That’s It! You’re Done!

Things I learned Along the way

1. This was a rather stressful event since I was on a time crunch to get this done, so ideally, you want to plan to do this before the birthday starts.
2. I tied all of the balloons together first and then tied them together again. This could possibly have been avoided. But I found it helped to keep the balloons in place for the final placement.  
3. I used a cardboard disc to help hold the balloon ribbons stables, but this was not necessary as once I tied the balloons to the wall, they were being forced to keep their shape. However, if they were being displayed on an uneven surface, such as the edge of a table, this would have been helpful.
4. You do not need to stick to flowers.  You can make any other shapes you like. I started with a flower as it seemed simple.
5. This balloon arrangement does not need to only be used for birthdays. It can be used for anniversaries, graduations, or just so that you can have some decorative balloons around!

Did you find this tutorial helpful?

Let me know in the comments below if you found this tutorial helpful.