Balloon fun with a twist
Kilbride woman spreading the joy with inflatable art.
For Tom Griffin of Kilbride, going for a snack and opening up the fridge door to find it full of balloons is a fact of life.
“It feels normal,” he tells The Telegram.
It’s what happens when your wife is a professional balloon twister. Keeping airfilled balloons in the cold actually helps them last longer, and it’s something Heather Griffin often does with her creations as she prepares for a birthday party or creates a centrepiece.
Something else that’s totally normal for the Griffins? Travelling the continent, attending balloon conventions in places like Orlando and Las Vegas, meeting thousands of other balloon artists.
“The balloon world is huge. Most people don’t have any idea,” Heather says.
Heather, 64, began balloontwisting 12 years ago, after retiring from a job with telecommunications company Stratos Global Corp. Having always been a creative type, she was inspired by balloon twisters she had seen while on vacation in Florida and picked up a package of balloons when she came across them in a store.
“I blew one up and made a hat and put it on Tom’s head and said, ‘Oh, this is something I want to do,” says Heather, a mother and grandmother. She ordered some good-quality balloons online and began learning how to twist them into sculptures, teaching herself to the point where she is now often invited to teach techniques to others at international conventions. With her business, Fun With a Twist, she’s kept busy.
Heather’s balloon twists aren’t your regular dog and sword shapes. She’s done everything from Easter wreaths to cartoon characters like Elsa and Batman, to a lighthouse with a real working light in the window. There’s no animal she hasn’t made from balloons and she has completed massive floor-to-ceiling displays at conferences, preferring to use natural latex for her pieces. Birthday parties are her specialty, but she often fills customer orders for table centrepieces and special occasion décor as well. Christmas trees, underwater scenes, giant tulips taller than she is — she’s made it all.
Balloons have come a long way, Heather explains, with different types and textures and colours that are similar to paint hues: there isn’t just “green,” there’s “emerald,” “lime” and “mint.”
Mother’s Day weekend was an extra busy one for her, seeing her filling orders right to the last minute and arranging contactless pickups with customers.
She also had a string of drive-by visitors to her neighbourhood coming to see the impressive 400-odd balloon mural she has created on her front step as part of a worldwide balloon artist effort to spread joy.
“I actually made the balloon wall in the house and then put it outside at 7:30 in the morning on Saturday, in all that wind,” Heather says. “I was like the guy in (the Disney movie) ‘Up,’ trying not to float away.”
Heather’s favourite balloon twist is an octopus. One she’d love to do is a wearable balloon dress, but she doesn’t think she’ll ever get the chance.
“I have a vision of a dress in my mind and I even have the perfect person picked out to wear it, but my eyesight is going,” she says, explaining she’s had multiple surgeries on her eyes. She is colour blind in one eye and has good but limited vision in the other. “It would take eight or nine hours straight to make a dress in balloons and that’s so hard on someone who’s almost 65. That’s a younger person’s game. I won’t get to do it but I’m just enjoying what I’m doing. I know that one of these days I’m going to go blind and I’ll have all these colourful memories to think about.”
Seeing his wife so passionate about something that brings joy to people is enough for Tom.
“Heather is so talented and so good with entertaining people and making people happy,” he says. “It just works very well.”
Heather likes the idea of twisting balloons into happiness.
“That’s the way I like to think about it, a balloon as a smile for somebody,” she says. “Who doesn’t love a balloon, seriously?”
Heather and her balloon art can be found on her Facebook page, Fun With a Twist.