Shawn Mewborn ditches corporate career for family balloon-making business
Children stand at his feet, holding queso-dipped tortilla chips and half-filled cups of Coke. There’s a look of wide-eyed amazement — they’ve found magic in the Vista.
His plain black apron is packed with thousands of balloons — pink, green, yellow and red — each a few twists and turns away from a ladybug bracelet or an elaborate arching rainbow hat.
It all starts with one question: Do you have your listening ears on? He runs through a super-speed verbal list of every animal, alien or balloon accessory, from Spiderman to a pirate sword to a jumping dolphin.
He’s Shawn Mewborn, much better recognized by his moniker: The Balloon Man.
Balloon artistry is his full-time gig, operating with his wife Janice under the company title Balloonopolis. Every Monday from 6 to 8 p.m., he crafts balloons during Salsarita’s Kid’s Night in the Vista.
College students, 5-year-olds and their parents alike are struck with smiles and muffled giggles as the great Balloon Man uses one hand pump to make wrist-sized frogs and giant alien headpieces.
Empty chairs are filled by yellow octopuses with eight bright pink tentacles — not legs, as Mewborn notes in a pre-balloon science lesson. Parents request balloons for kids waiting at home, and children run from mom’s side toward the man effortlessly shaping monkeys to hang on tables and chairs.
It’s magic.
The Craft
It’s a unique art, the art of balloon making, and it’s divided into two spheres: twisting and entertaining, and balloon decorating. The first makes poodles and penguins for birthday parties, corporate functions and festivals. The latter creates balloon masterpieces to adorn large-scale events.
Mewborn has coined himself a “decotwister.” He does both, which he said isn’t a common feat in the business.
Balloon arches stretch across the Horseshoe for every commemorative Carolina affair — grand semi-circles covered with hundreds of color-coded balloons. It’s all Balloonopolis.
This year, the Mewborns made the Bid Day arches for Delta Delta Delta, Alpha Delta Pi, Gamma Phi Beta, Alpha Chi Omega and Delta Zeta sororities. Mewborn will also be awake at 3 a.m. this Saturday to decorate campus for Carolina Scholars Day.
Balloonopolis has made Gamma Phi Beta’s Bid Day arch for the past few years, but his business expanded to the other sororities this fall because of a worldwide shortage — of helium.
It’s not a joke. Mewborn can’t get helium. It’s just not in supply. Many sororities have made their own arches in the past, but without a helium machine, matters are a bit more complex. But Balloonopolis has the ability to hand-pump balloons and attach them to a grid.
The crowning Balloonopolis achievement, however, isn’t an arch. It was so complex, in fact, that it made the business card. Shawn and Janice spent 30 hours making a 7-foot-tall Scottish warrior, Presbyterian College’s mascot.
The arches and warrior fall under the decorating category. But the twisting and entertaining, which makes up two-thirds of Balloonopolis’s revenue, is Mewborn’s main act.
Mewborn visits libraries and daycares, threading comedy and balloon tricks into a 30-minute performance that also usually includes glitter tattoos.
The Beginning
It’s not a career the school counselor is going to sandwich in between business and biology. So how does one begin a life in the balloon business?
Twelve years ago, Mewborn was at a restaurant with his two daughters, Jillian and Jenna (2- and 4-year-olds at the time). A balloon artist came to the table with one line: “Want a balloon?”
It’s a laughable line after seeing Mewborn at work. He has kids grabbing their stomachs in fits of laughter, nearly falling over from the infusion of nose-plugged voices and fun facts about elephants’ trunk toes into the twisting and turning for every whim of their imagination.
But 12 years ago, Mewborn met this monotone young man, making a “one-balloon dog” (a novice animal, according to Mewborn) with absolutely no personality. He was impressed with the lackluster artist, because Mewborn had never even attempted to tackle the most basic balloon animal.
On the car ride home from dinner, Jillian (the 2-year-old) bit Jenna’s (the 4-year-old) balloon elephant, and sheer disaster struck. It was the end of Jenna’s world, but her dad was determined to make it all better.
The next day, on lunch break from his corporate IT and data analysis job in Columbia, Mewborn ran to Cromer’s P-Nuts and bought a bag of balloons. He spent the hour learning how to make a dog, a sword and a replacement elephant, all from a how-to book.
From there, a neighbor told a friend who told a friend, and Mewborn started part-time balloon artistry at weekend birthday parties. His pay was enough to fund the hobby, moving from a hand pump to a floor pump and traveling to balloon-making conventions across the country.
One of those conventions, in Dallas, was where the foundation of Balloonopolis was born.
The Family
He found love in a balloon-making place. Mewborn met his wife, Janice, at a balloon-making convention when the two were just starting each of their careers.
He had been in the balloon game for about four years, and Janice, from Denver, had been crafting for just six months.
Now, what’s a balloon-making convention? Mewborn describes it as, “350 crazy people who play with balloons for a living taking over a hotel and getting very little sleep.” There are instructional classes, competitions and a “jam room” where, 24 hours a day, all attendees can catch up with balloon-making friends and share tricks of the trade.
The balloon-making community is international, Mewborn said, and his marriage as living proof of the power of connections within the hobby.
His smile is wide, and the joy he gets from his job is clear as he runs through his history, but nothing beats the glow of when Mewborn is speaking about his wife: “She has a natural gift, everything flows for her,” he said.
He admits his wife had him beat, despite his years of experience, when they first met. She skipped the one-balloon dog and went straight for the fancier creations.
The two married in February 2005 and formed Balloonopolis in January 2006.
Both Shawn and Janice cover the bulk of appearances and events now, switching off days and locations, and occasionally appearing as a two-person show. But the two girls who sparked Shawn’s interest in balloon-making have become a part of the business.
Jillian, now 14 years old, and Jenna, now 16 years old, have caught on to the family craft and performed in a balloon-making show Friday night at Dutch Fork High School.
Shawn taught his mother-in-law how to make balloons, too. And in the house of balloon artists, there’s a room dubbed, appropriately enough, the “balloon room” which holds over 100,000 uninflated balloons.
It all comes back to the magic. Twenty-year-old students are giddy as Mewborn — a two-time USC grad himself — builds Cocky and then turns it into a decidedly fashionable hat.
Parents make their own long-planned requests after watching Mewborn’s skills on display, and kids begin to make plans for the next week’s animal.
Balloonopolis is a business that has, well, ballooned as the years have gone by, even with the state of the economy. And the couple’s appearances, which include Salsarita’s in Columbia and Lexington, Moe’s at Sandhill and Uno’s in Lexington, bring in a crop of regulars — both young and old — each week.
“I have the best job in the world,” Mewborn said. “I get to put smiles on people’s faces; I get to go to parties all the time; I get to make people happy.”
To reach the Balloon Man and Balloonopolis, visit www.balloonopolis.com. All rates are based on party size, type and difference and can be negotiated through Shawn Mewborn.