while I’ve done quite a few hot air balloon ice sculptures in my career, this is the only one I recall doing in New Orleans, for a wedding at a venue in New Orleans City Park.
updated 10/24/23 with the first ice sculpting secrets TikTok π It sucks, but it’s a start!
October means balloons!
I woke up earlier this morning than I usually do. While I was wrapping my head around the things that I planned to do today, I thought about what day it was, the first Saturday of October. Then I suddenly realized that 2 states to the west and about a mile higher, even though it was even earlier there, thousands of people were already up and about in my hometown.
They were assembling on a wide field in high desert Albuquerque to witness an awesome sight: hundreds of hot air balloons rising into the sky as dawn broke over the Sandia Mountains. The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta was underway!
What's a Balloon Fiesta?
Albuquerque’s International Balloon Fiesta has made Albuquerque the hot air balloon capital of the world. It’s the largest gathering of hot air balloons anywhere and is one of the most photographed events in the world. Growing up in Albuquerque, hot air balloons became a pretty normal thing and it wasn’t terribly unusual for a balloon to land somewhere nearby, like maybe in your wide open school playground. Exciting, for sure, but not terribly unusual.
Albuquerque has a dedicated balloon park in the northern part of the city, not all that far from the Rio Grande. Early each October, hundreds of balloonists gather in Albuquerque for just over a week of various early morning ballooning events, with some events later in the day. (Hot air balloons fly a lot easier in cool morning air.) Hundreds of thousands of non-balloonists come to witness the colorful spectacles up close throughout the week π³Β
I kind of think that the Balloon Fiesta is the closest thing that Albuquerque has to Mardi Gras. Not because people dress up or anything, but because otherwise normal adults willingly sacrifice precious sleep and drag their kids out of bed to go participate in something whimsical and magical. Plus, along the way, they might have a drink or two, far earlier than they usually would π
The colorful floats though, are different. Instead of along pothole ridden streets and thronged by crowds yelling for beads, they travel through the sky and thankfully things only rarely get thrown from them. Also though, they actually float! And just like in Nola, the crazy shapes and characters are definitely present. The last time I was at the Fiesta, Darth Vader and Yoda were preparing to soar into the sky together. Plus, there’s often a giant cow (Airabelle) and I’ve also seen a butterfly, a penguin, a cute baby sloth, and even an astronaut. And that’s just a tiny sample!
see, Darth and Yoda can be friends! Although Yoda looks a little pissed…
an adventurous hot air balloon ice sculpture design
Before I get too sidetracked, let’s take a look at the hot air balloon ice sculpture design. Basically, it’s a balloon soaring through the air (pilotless, apparently π€ͺ) with mountains in the background. This is a very plausible scenario in Albuquerque since the Sandia mountains are really right there. The balloons don’t fly over the mountains, and not usually too near them either, but the Sandias are the background for many things Albuquerque. The clouds at the bottom of the design are less likely, but we’ll say it was weirdly foggy π¬
You don’t have to add anything to the rather plain design that I have here, but it works great for a simple monogram like in the one I did for the wedding. Small logos or messages work great too. And you can decide if you want anyone in the gondola or not π
I’ll talk about the challenges of a balloon design more down below, but suffice to say that I make my hot air balloon ice sculptures much more as facades rather than fully in the round pieces. I usually use a 4″ thick slab of ice with an attached stabilizing base.
I did the thin detail lines in the sculpture with an ice needle. Or you could use a 1/8″ bit. I do try to round the edges of the balloon, but there’s only so much you can do.
the problem with hot air balloon ice sculptures
When I lived in Albuquerque, the hot air ballon ice sculptures were basically my only early morning projects. Everyone else wanted their ice sculptures during normal waking hours, usually in the evening. Brunch sculptures were pretty much the only other ones before noon.
The problem with hot air balloon ice sculptures is that real hot air balloons are supported by air. That’s often a problem with other flying thing ice sculptures too, like birds, bugs, and planes. But hot air balloons are unusually challenging. Unless you were to make one hollow, a hot air balloon ice sculpture is extremely top heavy and the gondola at the bottom is relatively tiny. Thus, like you would if you were making a ballerina holding up an elephant, you have to use a little imagination for the support structures.
So you need creative supports. But the main way to solve the problem is to make your balloon mostly 2D rather than 3D; make it a facade. I’ve never come up with another practical solution to the problem and I doubt there is one. Like I typically do for most 2D sorts of ice sculptures, I generally use 4 to 4 1/2″ thick slabs of ice.
Since I initially started thinking about hot air balloon ice sculpture designs in Albuquerque, my supports tended to be mountains, clouds, and the sun. (Btw, in New Mexico, a common symbol is the Zia, a Native American symbol for the sun that originated with the Zia people; see the design later in the post.) I think I had a balloon and rainbow design too, somewhere. If hot air balloon ice sculptures were much in demand in New Orleans, I’d probably work in a fleur de lis or two.
a couple hot air balloon ice sculpture extras
Digging through my old files, I found these 2 additional hot air balloon ice sculpture concepts. I don’t know if I ever fully sculpted either of them. I know I got pretty far along with them though, so it didn’t take much to tweak the designs for this post. (I could probably have worked on the luge a bit more however…) I looked back through pics to see if I could find either one, but so far, nothing.
With these concepts though, I used similar support ideas to hold up the balloon and both would definitely work.Β
here’s a concept for a hot air balloon ice luge. I think I ALMOST made this piece. It looks like I even programmed it for an I-Sculpt, but I can’t find any pics or more info.
here’s another hot air balloon ice sculpture concept that’s a little more polished than the earlier one. It also features a Zia, which is the Native American sun symbol that New Mexico adopted for its state flag. You might notice that the balloon isn’t exactly symmetrical. Because they aren’t; they’re just bags of hot air interacting with cooler air around them.
are hot air balloon ice sculptures CNC friendly?
If you tried to create a 3D hot air balloon ice sculpture, I’d say that it would be tricky no matter how you did it and that a CNC machine might not be much help. However, with this facade solution, these designs are very CNC-friendly. If I ever get another hot air balloon to sculpt in New Orleans or elsewhere, I’ll definitely run it on my CNC. After engraving and welding it to the base, I’d really only have to round the edges of the balloon to finish it off.
what could you use a hot air balloon ice sculpture for?
So what good is a hot air balloon ice sculpture? What sorts of events could use one? Well, obviously, from the pic at the top of the post, a wedding could. More than one proposal has gone down…ok, maybe not the best wording…in a hot air balloon. They’re considered romantic and champagne is often involved, with or without the romantic component.
The big surface of the hot air balloon gives you a lot of space for a lot of things. I put simple monogram on the one I sculpted here, but a logo, number, or message could easily work too. So that means that a hot air balloon ice sculpture COULD work for weddings, corporate events, birthdays, anniversaries, or even baby showers. The theme has to kind of work, but there are lots of possibilities.
Oh, and yes, you can use it for hot air balloon festivals, lol.
@icesculptingsecrets Research for ice sculpting is HARD! π Checking out the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, then my first real hot air balloon ride. After all that, I finally feel qualified to create a hot air balloon ice sculpture π #icesculpture #icesculptures #icesculpting #hotairballoon #albuquerqueballoonfiesta #wedding #neworleans #icesculptingsecrets β¬ original sound - ice sculpting secrets
if you can’t see the TikTok above, then your browser sucks 
(One of mine does too.) You can view it here instead.
in depth research is important!
When I’m working on an ice sculpture design, sometimes I really get into researching the subject so that my ice sculpture is as “accurate” as possible. In the case of my latest hot air balloon ice sculpture design though, I’d already done far more “research” than I normally do π
Years before I made the sculpture in New Orleans, I took an opportunity to bolster my already higher than average level of knowledge about balloons. While visiting my mom in Albuquerque one October, I went back to the Balloon Fiesta for the first time in a long time. And then shortly after the Fiesta, I had my first real hot air balloon ride!
When I was a kid in elementary school, I won a tethered balloon ride in a contest. So this wouldn’t be my first time in a balloon. But a tethered ride stays attached to the ground and you don’t go anywhere, kind of like riding a weird elevator to the top of a building and coming back down. That was fun and memorable, but it didn’t even compare to a full on balloon ride.
I made myself a little nervous by picking maybe the sketchier of the balloon companies. When I got out to the take-off site much earlier than I wanted to be awake, there were several balloons going up and it was clear that maybe I’d chosen the least fancy operation. However, it wasn’t like the pilot (That’s what they’re called, swear!) was sneaking swigs from a flask. He definitely knew what he was doing and the gondola that we were in at least wasn’t the size of a small bus, like some of the others going up around us.
one cool part of my hot air balloon excursion was that they let you INSIDE the balloon while it’s being inflated. I stepped carefully to make sure I didn’t pop it π€£
yes, I’m actually up in the sky for this pic (selfie stick), and having an awesome time!
Part of my motivation for getting in a balloon was to help me face a minor fear of heights. I’d tried other things in the past to work on this: bungee jumping, zip-lining, and parasailing. Ballooning though, would expose me to the longest lasting heights experience and I’d have pretty much zero control.
As it turned out, however, ballooning was the most peaceful and least scary of all of my fear fixes. I loved that balloon ride! For a while, we floated above the Rio Grande and in the end, we came down in a woman’s driveway. I think she brought cookies out for us? (She was really nice and understanding about the giant deflating balloon in front of her house; pretty much all Albuquerqueans are π) And then we had champagne to celebrate the whole not dying part before the shuttle came to pick us up.
If you ever get a chance to take a balloon ride, I’d definitely encourage you to do it!
But maybe don’t pick the sketchy operation, y’know, if you have a choice…π
links and stuff
As I write this, it’s over a week after I first started this post. I started it on the first day of Balloon Fiesta and now it’s the last day. It was kind of a rough week as I had a big project midweek but also fell ill. Sculpting ice with a fever is never ideal π©
This hot air balloon ice sculpture design is one of only a few new designs that I’ve added to ice sculpting secrets. The other day, I also added a Baroque dolphin and I hope to keep adding more in the near future as I continue to restore and expand the site. I have bucketloads of existing ice sculpture designs and ideas for many more, but it takes a bit to get them ready for the site. Plus, you might have noticed that I like to write a lot of other crap π© to go along with them.
Check out the design page for many more ice sculpture designs. Also, check out the design usage guidelines to see what uses are permitted.
You could also find photos and info from this entry on the ice sculpting secrets Instagram account or the facebook page. ice sculpting secrets is also on TikTok (sort of, so far, lol), although videos there aren’t really tied to posts as much. You can comment on IG and fb as well as below. And if it won’t LET you comment below, then definitely comment on fb and/or IG. Thanks!
