Green Party Of Brooklyn

You will need:

• A balloon — Look for the larger, rounded balloons that says “helium quality”. The smaller party balloons are not big enough.
• Water Faucet or Spiot
• Bowl to hold the balloon in the freezer
• A towel
• Optionally, if you’d like to add anything to the sphere, have food color, glitter and other additives ready.

1) Put food coloring or glitter into a standard party balloon (optional). Attach standard balloon to faucet.  Depending on the depth of the sink you might want to have a few dishes underneath the balloon so it doesn’t stretch too much when you fill it up.  Hold the balloon where it is wrapped over the faucet, otherwise it will slip off when you begin filling it with water.

2) Fill balloon with very cold water. The colder the water at filling, the quicker the water freezes. Fill the balloon to a good size, but don’t overfill.  Don’t tie until you have established how the balloon will fit into the bowl. To get a round shape, the balloon should raise above the rim of the bowl about the same height as the height of the bowl.  In other words, if the bowl is 4 inches high, the balloon should rise 4 inches above the rim of the bowl or a little less since water expands as it freezes.  If it rises higher than that the shape of the ice sphere will be more head-shaped than round.

Before tying the balloon, release the air bubble that accumulates just below the opening of the balloon.

4)  Dry balloon thoroughly and make sure that the bowl is super dry as well to avoid the sphere freezing to the bowl. If that’s no huge deal – you can unfreeze it later, however, it’s best if you can simply take the sphere from the bowl without another step.

5) Place the bowl with the water-filled balloon in the freezer.  Ensure that the bowl sits on a level surface.  Also, make sure that the balloon does not touch anything, including the walls or ceiling of the freezer.  The water will not freeze where the  balloon touches one of the walls.  I had to take a shelf out of my freezer to make enough space.  The balloon should also not touch anything else, frozen burritos, let’s say.

6) I don’t know how long it actually takes for the sphere to freeze.  It probably varies a bit from freezer to freezer, but I leave them in for two – three days at least.

7) Remove bowl with balloon from freezer.  Take balloon from bowl and place on secure surface.  Cut balloon and peel it away…and voila, there it is, your own homemade ice globe. Left outside the freezer, it begins to melt quickly, so after viewing, put sphere on plate and put back in freezer.

8.) Note that these spheres are heavy if you ever needed to transport them to a fabulous climate protection action, for instance.  Transport should ideally take place in a cooler with ice in it.