My approach to the first inflatable was that I wanted to make a beach ball and I wanted to use fun colors. I used the purple and silver bags and cut strips, and then used the heat sealer to seal them together until I ended up with a long line of purple and silver stripes. I then realized that it was not looking much like a beach ball and that the best I could do was make a cylinder, but I wasn’t sure how to make the circle parts, so I decided the just heat fuse the sides together. I originally was intending to put the seams on the inside of the inflatable, but I realized I really liked the dimension that the seams added, so I left it on the outside.
For my second inflatable, I did more research into what a beach ball is made up of. I saw that the pieces were flower petal shaped and connected to each other and then had circles at the top and bottom. I wanted to put the straw in one of the circles to have it better mimic an actual beach ball, but that was too hard, so I put it in the middle. I only used double-sided tape for this inflatable, but I sealed it up on accident before I could turn it inside out, so now the outside of it is sticky, which makes it harder to inflate. This inflatable took a long time to seal together because it had curved sides all over, and it was also hard to seal completely because there were a lot of gaps and holes. It is also the one that is the hardest to inflate fully. I am very excited that it turned out looking like a beach ball!
For my final inflatable, I knew I wanted to use the heat sealer again after spending so long taping. I was also curious about the idea of an inflatable within an inflatable. My original plan was to take 4 corners of bags and heat seal them together and put that inside of an inflatable, but I could only figure out how to put two corners together, so that is what I did. I snipped a hole in one side of the square and blew up the triangles (they are together and the air is shared between them, even though they look like they are separated) and then heat sealed over that hole, so the triangles are always inflated. Then, I put the triangles inside of a clear bag and heat sealed that, with the straw inside so it can be inflated and deflated. I like this one a lot, and I definitely want to explore inflatables within inflatables again in the future. Using the clear bag and seeing the steam inside when I orally inflate the bag was unexpected, and reminded me how cool it is the we are using our mouths to inflate pieces of plastic!
