#I named him Henry because this is the 39th piece I've attempted

[cookies-and-creamless]

Balloon Art Day 10

Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4 - Day 5 - Day 6 - Day 7 - Day 8 - Day 9

39. Monarch Butterfly - Henry

Each wing of this guy is at least as complex and detailed as most of the complete pieces I've made so far, so I'm really proud to have made this on my first attempt! I thought about a number of different ways to physically and mentally prepare myself for this, but in the end, I decided to just go for it. I'm pretty happy with how that decision worked out for me. I had some trouble very early on, but it didn't compromise the build in any way, and I was able to work through it pretty easily. The last mistake of any kind came at the very end of putting the first wing together, when my orange balloon was inflated just a little too much to separate into the final two bubbles. I substituted a small scrap of a balloon that I had leftover from the clownfish for the second bubble, and it worked out just fine in the end. After that point, the rest of the build went very smoothly. The second wing took less than half the time that the first one took, since the pattern is pretty repetitive and I had developed a good handle on the general bubble sizes and placements. Starting with Thompson the squid, I've kept a ruler handy to measure bubbles. As I've gotten back into this in the past few days, I've instead kept the ruler in front of me and not picked it up. This streamlines the measuring process significantly, at a slight cost of accuracy. One minor thing that bothers me about the way this ended up is that the wings really don't want to lay flat. It's not that big a deal, but that does definitely come down to accuracy and consistency. In general, I've improved a whole lot in those areas, so I'm very confident that I'll be able to do even better in the future, and I hope to continue showing off the results!