Make your own Balloon Juggling Balls

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This creates a nice completely smooth ball using 3 balloons (12” size) filled with 3/4 cup (or adjust for the size you like) with short grain rice.

You’ll need:

  • A measuring cup
  • A bottle (I like the Snapple size bottle because of the wider mouth it’s easier to fill with rice)
  • 12” balloons (4 times as many balloons as you want balls)
  • Short grain rice (3/4 cup for each ball you plan to make, plus a little extra cause it’s easy to spill)

Sit outside, or in an area where it’s okay to spill some rice.

  1. Pour the rice from the measuring cup into the bottle.
  2. Inflate the balloon with just a couple of breaths (so it’s bigger than a juggling ball). and twist (don’t tie) the neck of the balloon, and stretch the mouth of the balloon over the opening of the bottle.
  3. Let the balloon neck untwist (You now have a partially inflated balloon on the neck of a bottle of rice.)
  4. Invert the bottle with the balloon and pour the rice into the balloon.
  5. Take the balloon off the bottle, and let it deflate around the rice inside.
  6. Cut off the entire neck of the balloon, leaving a small hole with rice exposed.
  7. Take a 2nd and 3rd balloon and cut off the necks – plus a little bit more, so the hole is bigger than the neck
  8. [Option: cut tiny holes in 3nd balloon…This makes for very colourful balls, you can even cut tiny fancy patterns of holes if you’re patient. This does make the final stretching in step 11 more difficult, but every hole will leave a polka-dots of the underneath colour showing through once it’s stretched over] (illustration step 7)
  9. Stretch the second balloon wide open (it will sometimes break while trying to do this) and, covering the small exposed hole, enclose the rice-balloon with the 2nd balloon. (steps 8 and 9 in illustration)
  10. Turn the ball over
  11. Repeat with a third balloon and stretch over the ball, covering the place where the ball is just one-balloon thick.
  12. Tada, now learn how to juggle and remember it takes a lot of patience!

Share your juggling balls and skills with us on social media using #BlairEverywhere

Contributed by the Circus Skills team