End of Year Post

Well, I finally have some time off for Christmas break and I thought I'd better get in one last post. I was commissioned by University Park Mall to make a large sculpture for a kid's activity titled "A Charlie Brown Christmas". So I thought of Snoopy and his decorated dog house as my project. The week before that I was commissioned to make another one of my "Christmas Nativities" for a church in Valparaiso, IN.

A Happy New Year to All !

Where did September go ?

We are well into October with twisting for each Notre Dame Home game keeping me pretty busy. This month at our Michianan Twister's meeting ... we of course made Halloween sculptures and these are a few of my favorites. Earlier this month I was twisting away at the Shipshewana Craft Festival for 7.5 hours, making lots of fun hats, fishing poles, and butterfly wings.

Irishenanigans 2011

It was another FUN night of twisting at ND's Irishenanigans. It started at 10pm and finished up at 1am. The students are GREAT ! They had unique ideas and really appreciated the "ART" that went into each sculpture. Looking forward to starting Football season and twisting at Irish Green before each home game.

Chicago Tjam 2011

My brother and I attended a workshop put on by one of the balloon industry's supplier called Tjam on the road. They have different instructors at different cities across the US and this one was in Chicago. At the end of the day they had two contest. One called "Through the Door" which was any sculpture that you could get through the door and the other was the "Seven Minute Contest" ... that was whatever you could make in 7 minutes. My dragon won First place for the "Through the Door Contest" and I made a very large spike hat which won me the "Seven Minute Contest" Woo Hoo ! I don't have a picture of my hat, but was told that it will appear on T Myer's website soon. I've also included a few of photos of the sculptures that we learn how to make.

July a day late

Wow!!! It has been a busy month. A new Library Program for the Milford Library, a Wedding Reception, Summer picnics, Birthday Parties, Bristol Homecoming, and the Enshrinement Festival ... I had GREAT FUN this month with all my friends.

This month's photos are from a Birthday Party that I couldn't attend ... it was on a Sunday (and I don't work on Sundays). So I created a Mario & Luigi for each birthday guest and dropped them off on the way to church for a co-workers son's party.

August is filling up as well with ND's Opening Mass Picnic and their late night student activity "IRISHenanigans" 10pm-1am. Hopefully I will be back with other twisters working the Irish Green area before each home game.
See you around !

Still Here

The Michiana Twister's invaded the Mishawaka Library yesterday (9Jun11) and left them a few large sculptures for their summer reading program "One World, Many Stories". They will be up for a couple of weeks for those in the area to enjoy.

See I'm still around and twisting balloons ... just not on my computer to upload new blog photos. Will try to do better and Thanks for checking !
Twister Mike

New Car Design

I was playing around ... OH ... I mean working hard at making bigger tires and once I made the rear wheels out of a Black 646 (6" diameter and 46" long) the rest of the car was pretty quick.

Tonight is our monthly twister's meeting at the Mishawaka downtown library starting at 6:30 and running until about 8:45, so if you want to see the car in person ... just show up !

Runway Clear

I bought a couple of DVDs from Stretch the Balloon Dude. One was "On The Road With Stretch" and it had a fun little airplane with landing gear. I revised the propeller to be a little quicker and made up this fleet of airplanes. What ? You were expecting mushy Valentine stuff ? ;0)

Retirement Party

Today one of the guys that work in the Lockshop retired and they asked if I would make him a balloon sculpture. This is what I came up with. Marv with a Gold Key to Notre Dame.