Product Spotlight: Deflated Balloon Pendants

If you read the blog, you know we love upcycling and recycling. So, it is exciting to see so many of the vendors at Crafty Bastards Silver Spring reusing materials. Ashley Pickin from Normal is Boring (booth #22) has actually found a way to use discarded balloons and balloon parts.

I asked Ashley some questions about how she started recycling balloons.

The balloon scrap recycling idea didn’t come to me overnight. I had just started to learn how to do balloon art and I was asking my balloon artist boyfriend a million questions: How do you keep them from popping? Why does mine look crooked? But the one question that I didn’t like the answer to was, “What do you do with all of these scraps and broken pieces?”

He said, “Some of them can be inflated and used for smaller parts on sculptures, I just throw the rest away.” The idea of throwing the balloons away didn’t bother me a whole lot because balloons are made from latex, a naturally biodegradable substance. But they were colorful and my pack rat instincts said “These are good for other uses.”

So I asked Ryan to start saving his scraps for me and I stared at them for weeks before I realized that they were just like any other material, they just needed to be manipulated to fit my needs. So I played with collages and patterns and the different parts of the balloon (who knew that there were different parts to a balloon?!) And one day after a ton of trial and error popped out the first few pieces. I was very excited (and I still am) and I’ve been playing with them ever since! That was only about six months ago, so I still have a lot of learning to do!

So, having a boyfriend who is a balloon artist doesn’t hurt. It is now all very clear.

Ashley starts with something that looks like this:

And this:

And makes these awesome pendants:

I also asked Ashley about latex allergies since 1 in 150 people are actually allergic to the latex that balloons are made of. She says that she coats the balloons with a sealer on the front and back so that no latex is exposed. She cautions, though, that she hasn’t employed someone with a latex allergy as a guinea pig to test these out. That would just be cruel! In the meantime, those with an allergy may be interested in her resin pieces, which have the balloon pieces embedded in them.

Ashley is a first time Crafty Bastard! You can visit her and her balloons at Crafty Bastards Silver Spring on June 28th at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center (8230 Georgia Ave, Silver Spring, MD).

Tina Seamonster blogs her life and craft at I Like Seamonsters.com. She dated a magician (who didn’t, right?) in college and is lucky she didn’t try to upcycle any of the materials from his act.