Water Bottle Hot Air Balloons

First, get to the store. Second, buy a supply of AquaBall Naturally Flavored Water. Third, drink the AquaBall Naturally Flavored Water. Fourth, save the empty bottles. Fifth, break out the craft supplies-we have a water bottle hot air balloon to make!
I was introduced to AquaBall last month at the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration. The super cute bottles were decked with all of our favorite characters.
They weren’t just cute-they were a zero calorie way to stay hydrated while we were out in the sun. No sugar. No high fructose corn syrup. No artificial colors or flavors. Just Stevia sweetened, naturally flavored, vitamin enhanced water. All in that cute ball-shaped bottle.

The bottle gave me a few dozen craft ideas right away, but I finally settled on trying to turn them into hot air balloons.To make the hot air balloons, I started by spray painting the empty AquaBall bottles. The shrink wrapped labels are easy to remove-no need to struggle with sticky residue. Using a stick is a simple way to hold the bottle while you’re painting. Keep and spray the caps, too!
The bottom of each bottle is segmented with five lines. Those lines make it easy to stripe your bottle. Start by applying a piece of washi tape at the top of one segment, carefully smoothing it down to the lip of the bottle. Once the first five pieces of tape are placed you can fill in, eyeing the placement to keep things even.

I tried several different sizes of washi, but the thinnest worked best on the round shape of the bottles. Once I was happy with my tape placement, I gave it a few coats of gloss Mod Podge. This helps keep the tape in place. You can also use a matte or satin finish-I just like the look of gloss on washi. Don’t feel like you’re limited to washi to decorate your balloon. Permanent markers, paint pens, decorative paper, stickers…whatever you can dream up.

I started off thinking that I would use real baskets for my balloons-the tiny baskets in the miniature section of my craft store were perfect. Except they were almost $3 each. Then the idea of using the caps hit me.

When I was spray painting, I sprayed all of the caps gold because it was the closest color I had to ribbon I was using, and I didn’t think a perfect match was vital here. I used hot glue to hold four pieces of gold cord in place on the cap, then I used more hot glue to add the burlap ribbon. Twine would have been perfect here, but I couldn’t find mine so the gold cord had to do. Perfect little baskets for almost free. (I did have to buy the ribbon, but I used the store app for a coupon, so…it was less than $1 and I have plenty left over for a new project!)

Because the universe loves me and really wanted this project to turn out OK, when it was time to hot glue the cords to the bottle neck I noticed the four notches in the threads. They made everything line up perfectly. Yay! The only thing you have to worry about is getting each length of cord to be as close to the same length as possible.

I then covered the bottle’s neck with-you guessed it-more washi tape. Everything also got another coat of gloss Mod Podge-even the ribbon on the basket.

I suppose you could make this with wires and you might have a cute desk accessory that will stand up on it’s own. Since I was using cord, however, this was a decoration that needed to hang. So now we come to the hardest part of the project…adding the eye hook. You just screw it in, but I’ll confess that this took me forever. Maybe I’m weak. Maybe I should have grabbed the drill and made a tiny pilot hole. We’ll never know. For the record, I recommend adding a tiny pilot hole before you twist in your eye hook. Or some weight training for your arms. Whichever you think is easier.