Designer Showcase
Sue Bowler, CBA
About Sue
BalloonArt by Sue Bowler
United Kingdom
Instagram
Sue's many hats include balloon artist, training instructor, and author of The Very Best Balloon Blog (over ten years of balloon guidance and wisdom in one place!). She discovered balloons in 1990 when she was looking to start up a home based business, and came across balloons by chance!
This Master of Color Mixing firmly believes that the process of choosing colors can be made easier by using the tools that you are given. "If you understand colour and how to create the tints, tones, and shades of a colour, finding which balloons to use can be quite straight forward," she says. (See our Color Issue of Images Magazine for more on this!) She also stresses that testing your combination is very important before ordering large quantities.
Sue adds, "In the past, I would simply play around with different balloon colours, but now it is much easier with all the great Custom Colour Charts that Qualatex has available."
The Business of Balloons
As a Qualatex Instructor, Sue has spent decades teaching new balloon artists how to properly price their work to be profitable, yet competitive. "All the work involved to double-stuff, and the extra cost of materials, need to be included within the job costing calcuation, but this does not double the price and it gives the customer exactly what they want," she says.
I love Chrome balloons inside Jewel colours, they are so vibrant and look like glass!
Sue, on her favorite combinations of Qualatex latex colors
Sue's Favorite Custom Color
"The very first custom colour balloon that I created was long before Qualatex made a Lime Green balloon, I had never thought about double-stuffing balloons before and put a blue balloon (I can’t remember exactly which balloon I used) inside a Citrine Yellow and created a fabulous bright lime colour… I remember being very excited to show it off during one of my training courses!"