Paper Balloon Greeting Cards | Inside the Studio
- Shannon Cyr
- Apr 23
- 6 min read
A look inside the design process behind our Paper Party Balloons greeting card, from early designs to a final version that uses scale, movement, and material to bring the design to life.
We've been working through designs for cards in the birthday collection, and just finalized all of the birthday cake cards.
I was ready to move to the next subject: balloons. I love balloons. They’re bright, colorful, festive, and one of the quickest ways to create a party zone.
When I first started making my own greeting cards in 2019, balloon cards were one of the first things I tried. I figured they’d be simple. An oval, a triangle, a string — how hard could it be? But those early attempts showed me how much I still had to learn. I was moving from a Sizzix tool to Cricut Design Space, and I didn’t yet have the control or the design instincts I rely on now.
Since then, I’ve spent years building my skills, refining my style, and learning how to work with paper in a way that feels intentional and clean. Coming back to balloons now, as I build out the studio, feels like closing a loop. I’ve been wanting a balloon design for Mainely Cards for a long time, but it took time, and a lot of practice, to find a version that finally felt like mine.
I pulled out a handful of cards from the past and laid them out in front of me.
Hmm. Where do I begin?
First, the positive
These cards are the result of learning. I was testing shapes, cuts, placement, and different papers to figure out what works. They’re not perfect, they're prototypes. Creative expressions that did exactly what they were supposed to do: teach.
Now for the critique
The first thing that stands out is the lack of visual interest. Each balloon looks placed on the card instead of looking like it exists within a world that just happens to be on a card.
The single balloon designs are clean, but static. The strings are too short for the size of the balloons. They're lifeless. The larger problem is that the balloons sit on their own, with no relationship to the rest of the card. It's tidy, but boring.
The grouped balloons get closer to creating interest, but they run into a different set of challenges. Layering colored cardstock on top of black cardstock makes alignment a lot harder than I expected, and it shows in the final result. Also, for all the groups, the balloon strings converge in a way that looks unnatural. Instead of balloons, they look more like lollipops.
New Day, New Paper Balloons
This time, I treated the card like a lens—a snapshot of the moment I wanted to capture.
I thought about what you see after entering a room decorated with helium balloons. As you move through the space, the balloons move with you. Some drift into your path. Others glide off in another direction. Some float higher up, with only their strings within reach.
That's the moment I wanted to capture.
Paper Balloon Design
I created most of the design natively in Cricut Design Space. A balloon’s silhouette is pretty simple when you break it down: a circle and a triangle.
First, I modified six circles to make balloons of varying shapes and sizes, suggesting both scale and how much helium each one contained. Next, I welded triangles to each balloon to create the neck and tail.
The balloon strings were a little more work. I tried to build them in Design Space, but I couldn’t get the free-flowing result I was aiming for. After a solid hour of trying and failing, I pivoted and drew the strings in a different app and uploaded my design into Design Space. From there, I adjusted the weight and length of each string to compliment its balloon.
Paper Balloons v1
For me, the first card is about getting something on paper. It's my 'Just Make the Card' philosophy.
I’m not trying to solve the design. I’m looking at the shapes I created, the specific paper I chose for each one, and how everything actually fits on the card. Scale on screen doesn’t always translate in paper. A few millimeters can throw everything off when you’re working in the real world with texture and fixed real estate.
Just Make the Card is also how I stay out of design perfectionism. I can lose hours in the design app aligning shapes, changing colors, and making it 'just right.' Making the card pulls me into the studio where the real work begins.
For this card, I tested the balloon shapes with a colorful banner I created earlier in the week. I had a stack of banners and wanted to see if one belonged in the design.
Nope.
The banner was a good idea that just doesn't work. It’s time-consuming to build and far too delicate. With eight flags, it's surprisingly stiff and doesn't drape naturally. I had to fight it the whole time. It also takes up too much space and it forces the scale of the rest of the design.
Paper Balloons v2
First thing I did was remove the banner so the balloons had room to breathe.
Next, I used different paper types for the balloons. The first prototype used all matte cardstock and it feels a little flat. For v2, I selected a mix of no-shed glitter paper, foil paper, and matte cardstock.
Then, I added another detail to give the balloons more depth. I cut small shapes into the tops of a few balloons, letting the white cardstock show through to mimic light reflecting off the surface.
I also changed how I was thinking about scale and cropping. Instead of keeping multiple balloons fully visible and roughly the same size, I designed one complete balloon near the center and let the others extend beyond the edges of the card. That created movement and hinted at a larger space beyond the frame.
The matte paper was a quick no. The yellow balloon felt unfinished compared to the other balloons.
The glitter worked. The pink, red, and purple sparkling paper added life and movement.
The strings also worked. Instead of forcing one string per balloon, I cut a range of strings from black matte cardstock, and chose each one as I worked. The freedom to vary the length and direction in the moment made the process feel more natural and fluid.
The foil failed. I wanted to love the foil paper. It’s reflective and shiny, and it mimics mylar balloons in the best possible way. It was the obvious choice. But foil shows everything. Every tweezer mark, glue line, and smudge. There’s nowhere to hide.
Then I thought about donations. With the Buy 1, Donate 1 model, cards crafted for donation need to hold up in a care setting. I thought about how these cards would be handled over time. Between packaging, shipping, gifting, and donation use, they needed to hold up. I started imagining the foil balloons after repeat handling, and all I could picture were tattered, worn cards. That’s not the energy these cards are meant to carry.
Paper Balloons v3
I kept the parts that were working: the cropping, scale, spacing, strings, and the reflection cut.
All glitter all day. I decided to use no-shed glitter paper for every balloon. The paper is a favorite. It’s festive, shiny, and holds up to handling in a way the other materials can’t. The best part is that it doesn’t create a mess. No flakes or glitter residue. That matters when cards are going into care settings.
This is the moment I wanted to create. Bright, glittering balloons of different sizes filling a space, like stepping into a room mid-celebration.
The smallest gold balloon near the top reads as if it's the furthest away, while the large red balloon anchors the foreground. The balloons drift across the card instead of sitting neatly on it. Some balloons cut off at the card's edges, as if they're floating in and out of view. The strings hang at different lengths, adding just to the illusion of movement.
Each balloon is cut from no-shed glitter cardstock. It catches the light and sparkles as you move the card, bringing the whole scene to life.
This is it. The final design. It looks like a snapshot. A moment captured in paper.
Up, Up, and Away
It’s hard to ignore how durable and flexible this design turned out. The balloons work across different moments without needing anything added, making this a design that works beautifully for both gifting and donation.
More on that soon.
From Maine,
Shannon
