SEEGROTTE wedding installations

LIGHTNING BALLOONS

It takes about 10 minutes to walk from the entrance to the Barbara Adit, where the wedding celebration took place. We decorated one part of this track with elements, that were quite simple, but perfectly fitting in the dark gallery: glowsticks and lightning balloons.

300 pieces of glowsticks were quickly bended and thrown along the way. Such an easy trick to get a nice, colorful effect on a longer path.
I remember when I left the grotto after the celebration I saw a few sticks replaced on special fitting holes in the wall - that was so beautiful!

150 pieces of lightning balloons besides the glowsticks were not that trivial to organize, but as beautiful as well.

The idea for lightning balloons was inspired by the so called LED throwies: a small LED, a coin battery and a rare earth magnet, all taped together and then thrown onto metallic objects. An inexpensive way (~$1.00 per Throwie) to create non-destructive graffiti.

After we saw how simple and cheap it is to create lighting effects - without the need of electrical power - we experimented with the combination of air-filled balloons. A small LED taped on a battery and plugged into a simple balloon. We checked wether white LEDs were looking better in colored balloons, or colored LEDs in white balloons, and found out that best results are colored LEDs in colored balloons (red in red, blue in blue, and so on) while the metallic looking balloons did make the nicest shining effects in our opinion.

We perfectly calculated the time that was necessary to plug 150 LEDs into the balloons, and the time to blow them up on the spot with the help of a rented machine. At the end it happened that the ballons were not that much spreaded through the corridir as the glowsticks were, but it was also a special nice effect to have them more close together like a sea of shimmering balloons.

BTW what we did not calculate was the fact that when stretching a big number of balloons to plug the LEDs into it, you can get open bubbles on your fingers. :-o