How to Blow Up a Balloon

(Music playing)

Hi everybody! My name is Ori, and we are going to do some balloons today. The first thing we are going to learn, is how to mouth inflate a balloon. Mouth inflating a balloon is very, very hard and is not recommended. But, it is a challenge for balloon twisters and people who need balloons for the first time. It is really hard and I am going to teach you a way to do that. Now, we are going to use Qualatex 260 balloon. Now, this are the most common balloon for twisting, but they are extremely hard to mouth inflate.

Now, what you want to do to practice is inflate the balloon with a hand pump. Inflate it and deflate it several times to weaken the balloon that makes it a lot easier to start practicing. After you practice your mouth inflate and deflate, inflate, deflate, until it gets softer and you get more practice.

After a while you will be able to mouth inflate a regular balloon. The way to do that is, you grab the balloon by the nasal and hold and close off the balloon about an inch from the tip. Now, you stretch the balloon just a little bit. Maybe a half than what the balloon can actually stretch. This helps the balloon to loosen where you are going to inflate it with the first bubble.

Now, what I am doing is closing off about an inch below, maybe an inch or two below and then I need to blow up a small bubble. Now, if you are going to use your lungs, that will be very, very, hard. So what I tried to do is only use the air in my mouth and try to squeeze it with my muscles, with my tongue, and not involve the lungs or the diaphragm which is what we need to do for the second part.

After you get the first bubble, the hard part is squeezing up your diaphragm and really building up the pressure taking a big breath of air, and blowing it up. Now, this is very, very hard to do and it will take a lot of practice. But, this is how you blow up a balloon.