Share this with your friends!

DIY Balloon Garland Tutorial

We celebrated our sweet Nora’s first birthday this past weekend and I am proud to say I pulled off this party on a small budget! We recycled some party decor from past years, ordered the cake from a local grocery store and I made the balloon garland myself!

When I took on the balloon garland project, I thought it was going to be a monster of a task. But it was SO much easier than I anticipated and I was pretty proud of the end results (especially considering it cost less than $40 to make!)

Here’s what we used to make it:

Balloon Garland kit from Amazon (more details below)

-Balloons of various colors and sizes. We started with just 4 colors and ended up adding in a 5th. With a smaller number of colors, it was hard to not end up with clusters of one color. We purchased a variety of both 12-inch and 18-inch balloons.

-Command hooks and ribbon to hang

The main reason it was so simple to make the balloon garland was the kit I purchased from Amazon. It came with the garland strip, glue dots, and a nifty little tool to tie the balloons, which was a HUGE lifesaver!

How to make your own balloon garland

Putting it together was simple. You start by blowing up the balloons (hand-pumped like this one HIGHLY recommended). I would blow up about 10-15 balloons and start feeding them through the strip. I would alternate the direction the balloons were facing to give it more fullness.

Again, I cannot tell you how useful the tying tool was. If you can recruit help and get a good assembly line going with one person blowing up, one tying, and one stringing through, you will have your garland done in no time!

DIY balloon garland tutorial

So once you have your strip filled to the desired length, it’s time to hang! Trust me here, hang first, then fill in with the smaller balloons.

We used small, clear command hooks that are designed for hanging Christmas lights to secure our garland to the wall.

We used the white curling ribbon that came in the kit and strung it through three of the holes meant for a balloon, two at the top left and right corner of the garland and one in the middle. We didn’t add any security to the side of the garland that was hanging vertically.

Once the balloon garland was up, we started filling it in with smaller balloons.

This step seems to be key in every tutorial I have read and couldn’t agree more: the thicker and fuller it is, the better!

The reason you don’t want to do the filling-in before hanging the garland is to ensure you are only filling spots that are actually going to be seen. It saves a lot of time to only fill what’s needed.

I made our balloon garland the day before the party and the balloons looked perfect the next day.

Also, please note my one-year-old’s face in this photo… I’ll give you one guess as to how she felt about her smash cake!

DIY Balloon Garland Tutorial

More great party planning posts:

Swaddles n' Bottles is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. This program does not effect the price a customer pays for products. To read more on affiliate links, please view our privacy and disclosure page.