Alice is super excited to learn to do balloon sculpture, but at 4'6" everybody tells her there is no way she can blow these super-hard balloons by mouth. These folks don't know Alice, and haven't seen her help much larger women blow up hot water bottles!

She decides to approach the task by recording pressure of her blowing a series of increasingly difficult airship balloons - first the Qualatex 646, then the 350, and finally the 260. She is fairly confident about the 646, and simply takes a big breath and puffs repeatedly, holding the pressure continuously in her generous cheeks, u...

Alice is super excited to learn to do balloon sculpture, but at 4'6" everybody tells her there is no way she can blow these super-hard balloons by mouth. These folks don't know Alice, and haven't seen her help much larger women blow up hot water bottles!

She decides to approach the task by recording pressure of her blowing a series of increasingly difficult airship balloons - first the Qualatex 646, then the 350, and finally the 260. She is fairly confident about the 646, and simply takes a big breath and puffs repeatedly, holding the pressure continuously in her generous cheeks, until it is full. Happy with her first run, she attaches a yellow 350 to the tube, and proceeds to start it by "brute This makes her even more proud of her strength and determination, but she does want to try the 'pulling technique" to start the initial bubble before moving on to a 260. She loads up a pink 350, and measures the pressure required to start it with the technique, which as predicted, was lower. As with the prior balloon, she keeps puffing until it seems full, which is hard for her to tell without seeing the tip. Finally, her big moment arrives. Feeling confident, she decides to try to a 260. While this doesn't quite succeed at starting the balloon, it also doesn't dampen her enthusiasm, especially when she sees that she has now exceeded 3 psi - something neither of us thought was likely to happen anytime soon. She tries the pulling technique, but decides to ask the cameraman to pull for her, which results in success. Now that she knows how aggressively to pull, she loads up another balloon and does it all by herself. Next, she switches to a more compact mouthpiece without a measurement tapoff, which allows her to slide the balloon off to tie it. Success build on success as she inflates the balloon, and then digs into the next challenge - learning to tie it!