Easy DIY Ice Cream Cone Balloon Sculpture

For me, planning a party for fun people is not work at all–it’s just fun!  And with the ever-classic and yet super-hot balloon sculpture trend going on, the fun factor just keeps spiking!  For the recent ice cream social I hosted for some sweet girls, I decided the perfect finishing touch would be an ice cream cone sculpture, so I gave it a try and it was even easier than I thought!

Here’s what you need to make a cone like this:

(These are affiliate links which help to support this blog)

a roll of 2′ X 10′ chicken wire fencing

wire cutters

 brown kraft paper

 around 30 balloons (these are the ones I used)

a balloon pump

clear packing tape

double sided tape

The first step is to construct the cone, and you do that by unrolling the wire fencing and then starting to form it into the bottom tip of a cone shape with about 2 feet length of the fencing.

Use wire cutters to cut off that first length where it creates a small cone.

Next, continue the same process for another layer of cone, using the cut edges of wire to fold and join the next section of the cone, making the opening more wide as it goes to the top.

Fold over the top cut edges of wire to create a smoother edge along the top of the cone.

Next, use the kraft paper to cover the cone.

Use a little clear packing tape to secure the paper to the wire.

As with the fencing, you will need to cut the first length of paper for the bottom part of the cone, then use a second length to finish covering the top.

The paper may not cover the top edge just perfectly, but that’s fine– a little exposed fencing will help to make it easier to secure some of the balloons!

Tuck in the bottom tip of the paper for the cone and fold over the top edge as well, to cover the wire tips as well as possible.

Now the cone is ready for the balloons!  Don’t blow up the balloons more than 6 hours before you want to use them at your party so your balloons will look fresh for the sculpture rather than cloudy or deflated.

I used 3 colors for ours and layered them to appear like layers of different flavors of the ice cream.  You’ll blow up the balloons in different sizes as well to fit into the sculpture and fill in gaps.

We started by adding the first layer of balloons with packing tape.  Do this by cutting two lengths of tape, one approximately 2 inches long, and another approximately 5 inches long.  Sandwich them together over the knot of the ballon to create a nice tab to use to secure the balloon to the wiring.

Just simply start attaching balloons to your cone, covering the exposed wiring and making nice border around the top of the cone.

We found that standing the cone up in a corner made it easy to start filling it!

As you build your layers, use the double stick tape to adhere smaller balloons in place between the larger to fill in the gaps.

There’s no need to fill the entire bottom of the cone with balloons.  Once you make a border around the top, the others can be built upon those.

Just keep adding your layers and filling your gaps until your cone looks like you want it to! I made my top balloons a little larger to look like larger scoops and the smaller ones on the bottom looked like some little drips.

This whole project only took a couple hours and it was one of my favorite features at our little party!  In case you missed it, you can see all the details of the rest of the party by clicking here!

Hope you enjoy this and that you have tons of fun with it at your own parties!  Let me know if you have questions and I’ll do my best to answer!

SaveSave

SaveSave