If someone had told me 2 years ago that by January 2009 I would be addicted to blowing up balloons and making them into models I would have almost died laughing...

My wife and I have 3 young daughters and about 18 months ago we thought it would be fun for the eldest's next birthday to get 'one of those guys that does balloons' in. Now I am a serial 'in-sourcer' in most things I do and so I thought "I'll do that' and made a mental note to buy some balloons and do a little practice.

A few months later I remembered about the blloon thing and searched on the internet for where you could buy balloons that you could twist... a few days later I had a pump, a bag of neon 260's and a pamphlet on basic designs. 1st I made a dog, then a few more dogs... an hour later a flower, then an elephant... and so on.

Over the next few weeks I got to searching more and more on the internet for twisting related sites, and I quickly became absorbed in a whole new world that I never even realised existed.

Fast forward 18 months and outside of (day job) work, and looking after children, balloons is what I spend my time doing. After doing quite a few charity events I decided I would take the audacious step of setting up a web site, getting some business cards and seeing if people will pay me to do balloons... so far it seems they will.

In my day job I run my own small management consultancy, working mostly with call centres - it's very different to working with balloons, but I am slowly working on concepts to merge the two. More on these after the recession ends!    

Martin.