The instructions on this site are mostly written in 2 formats. Step-by-step photo instructions and bubble diagrams.

For those that haven't come across bubble diagrams before I thought I should explain how they work. They're a great guide for balloons as they are visual yet quite compact and can often be a lot simpler than the written word.

The graphic on the diagram represents the balloon. The diagrams are roughly to scale and give you an idea of the size of each bubble.

The black lines or arrows show which twists to twist together.

For example on a bubble diagram a lock twist looks like this:

As you can see from the photo the bubbles are made roughly to scale (although the first bubble is way out because I took the photos separately to drawing the diagram) then the two points connected by the black line are twisted together:

As I go through the twists in the next section you will see the bubble diagram for each twist on the top of the page. You can also see bubble diagrams to for each at a glance on the Twist reference page.

Don't try to do all the bubbles first then all the connections. Often, the easiest order to do things is create all the bubbles up to the far point of each connection then twist the connection and go on to the next set of bubbles.

In some instances there will be linking lines within other linking lines. Usually the outer connections are twisted first then the inner ones ( but it is certainly not a rule and in some instances it may be easier to do the inner connections before the outer one).Here are some examples:

The tail or nipple in bubble diagrams usual shows how much uninflated balloon should be left after you make the balloon not before. Usually the instructions tell you how much to leave uninflated at the start. If not each twist uses up roughly a centimetre so you can estimate how much you need to leave.

(To be a little more scientific about it I find that each twist uses about 8mm of uninflated balloons so the formula for how much uninflated balloon to leave at the start would be:

UB=8T+L

Where
UB= Amount of Uninflated Balloon to leave (in mm)
T=Number of twists in the creation
L=Uninflated balloon supposed to be present after model is twisted.

That's all very geeky of me and most balloon twisters have no trouble gestimating without a formula!)

Most bubble diagrams are drawn as above but there may be slight variations where a bubble to be pinch twisted is pointed to or alphabetic or numerical references for the twists are used.