If you’re looking for inspiration, education, tools, tips, and techniques for balloon decorating, you’ve found the right link: the RouseLINK™. Whether you plan events, produce décor, purchase supplies, or simply love creating with balloons—whether this is your first project or your five‑hundredth—our mission is to be the RouseLINK™ to your balloon decorating success.

My own balloon-decorating journey began without such a boost and was less‑than‑successful. As a high‑school student leading the prom decorating committee, I arrived to find our helium balloons scattered across the floor. We salvaged what we could, but it was more than twenty years before I tried balloon decorating again.

That new attempt was in early 1982 when I found a bag of “twisty balloons” and used them to make a gift for a friend in the hospital. She loved it—and a new passion was born for me. That passion led to selling balloon creations to support a church building fund and, later, to support my own part-time business.

In 1983, I added “RIBS™” (Rouse Internal Balloon Structures™) to my balloon sculptures to better control their shape and improve durability. It worked, and I subsequently taught, exhibited, and published my techniques, including floral versions I named “Fantasy Flowers”. My inside-out approach and the “Fantasy Flowers” name are now standard fare worldwide in the balloon gift and decorating industry.

In 1984, I took the next step. I left my career as a statewide supervisor and facilities designer to become a full‑time balloon entrepreneur. Over the next four decades, my work in balloon art and balloon‑decorating tools and techniques led to patents, new products, awards, exhibitions, publications, and teaching opportunities on five continents.

Along the way, I had a one-person public art gallery exhibition of my balloon sculptures in 1987. Then, in 1988, I introduced new balloon‑decorating products at an international convention, received recognition as Balloon Artist of the Year, and met Mary Queen, an accomplished balloon artist who became my wife and lifelong partner.

The year 2020 brought challenges for all of us. As COVID‑19 disrupted the world and the balloon industry, I faced major surgeries and a long recovery time. Like many in our community, I healed, adapted, and continued forward.

Today, balloon decorating is thriving again, and I am excited to share this site. Rouse.LINK/deco holds a growing collection of “inspiration, education, tools, tips, and techniques that you can use to stretch your imagination, expand your art, and increase your business.”

RouseLINK™ yourself to those benefits.:

1. Sign up below for your free RouseLINKnews™.
2. Bookmark this short-link: Rouse.LINK/deco and return often.

I look forward to meeting you here.

[Insert email signup]

Graham Rouse
RouseInternational.com
Rouse.LINK/deco
gmr@Rouse.LINK