DIY Water Balloon Finger Fidgets
This post is a variation on the tried-and-true balloon flour stress balls. These fidgets are made from water bomb balloons, which means they’re smaller, and more discreet – hopefully ideal for classes, lectures, or at work The fidgets are also filled with different materials – not just flour! This means that you can have half a dozen or more fidgets of different textures.
For this post, I’ve used kinetic sand, quinoa, play dough, and flour (pictured from left to right in the image below), but you can use practically anything. You might like to try legumes, water beads, marbles, silly putty, ordinary sand or clay. Go wild!
You’ll also need some small water balloons or water bombs.
All the materials I’ve used I either purchased at a junk shop, or in a supermarket.
1. Place the filling material in a small dish or bowl.
2. Use your fingers to carefully stretch the neck of the balloon open (demonstrated in the gif below). Depending on what sort of water balloons you have, it can be very easy to pierce the latex with your finger nails.
3a. Scoop and the filling material into the balloon – I’ve used my free fingers (demonstrated in the gif below), but if dexterity is an issue for you, or you’re worried about making a mess, you might need another person to fill the balloons with a teaspoon.
3b. To fill the balloons with play dough, roll the dough into small balls that will fit through the neck of the balloon (demonstrated below). I also added a bit of water to mine, to try and prolong the life of the fidget - I’ve noticed that the play dough has a tendency to dry out over time.
4. When the balloon is full, remove your fingers and squish the air out of the balloon (shown in the gif below). Take care to do this gently, or the contents might squeeze out everywhere (this is especially true for flour). The more you compress the contents of the balloon, the firmer the texture will be.
5. Make sure all of the filling is in the body of the balloon, by pinching off, stretching the neck of the balloon, and working any material caught in the neck down with your fingers (See the image below).
6. Tie the neck of the balloon in a tight neat overhand knot, just as you would with any other balloon (as demonstrated below), and cut off the excess neck with a pair of sharp scissor. If your water balloons are especially thin, you might like to put the stuffed balloon inside another balloon, before tying it off.
It’s worth mentioning that because the balloons are made from latex, they will perish over time. I’ve found that the kinetic sand I used perished the balloons faster than normal, but that might depend on what brand you buy. The balloons also don’t mix well oils – I have kept a vial of essential oil with my first set of finger fidgets, and the latex perished when the vial leaked.
If you’re allergic to latex, you might like to try using nitrile gloves. Nitrile doesn’t stretch as much as latex, but if you cut the fingers off the gloves, you’ll have a wider neck than a balloon, so you shouldn’t need to stretch it open as much anyway. Just fill it and tie it of the same as I’ve described above.
If you have limited mobility, dexterity or strength in your hands and fingers, you might have some success in using tweezers or pliers to hold the balloon open, just be careful not to nick or pierce the balloon. You might have more success getting someone else to hold the neck of the balloon open, while you fill it with your chosen contents.
