How can I reuse or recycle popped water balloons?

water-balloonsWe’ve had an email from Danielle – experiencing situation that will be oh-so-common at the moment:

My kids love playing with water bombs. There are gazillions of split water bombs all over my garden and garage roof and god know where else. I have also collected a tubful thinking I might do something with them. But what …? Obviously they are all split ones?

We’ve covered foil balloons on the site before but not the rubber type – so any ideas?

Like regular balloons, they’ve got an roll of rubber at the open end – snipped off, they make strong (but quite tight) rubber bands.

As for the larger, flat pieces – anyone know any good ways to fix them together to make a patchwork? While it’s not going to be elegant, it might make a fun splashproof surface for in a kids’ room or used to add grip when opening stubborn jars.

Any other suggestions?

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11 Responses to “How can I reuse or recycle popped water balloons?”


  1. Oraxia says:

    You could perhaps wrap them all together into a solid rubber ball for the kids to play with? Maybe use rubber cement? It would at least be colorful, if not necessarily the most useful thing in the world….

  2. Hollywood says:

    One could explore their creative side and create a piece of ones own art work with the shredded balloon pieces. This would be a perfect project for children (of course older than 5) supervised by a parent or guardian. In fact I recommend this as a home project, allow your child to show you their creative and colorful side. Art work can be glued to a piece of construction paper using the proper glue (doubt regular white glue will work, however I have never tried so it may). Art work can be framed for a family members birthday or special occasion and presented to parent or teacher. A few child project suggestions may be a stained glass window, as a parent draw a simple window or arched window on the paper or allow the child to draw his or her own window. Second, maybe a rainbow. The creative options are endless.

    I do art myself and I have used left over balloons for floral arrangements held in place by small small pins.

    Use these pieces to add a zest of color to a room in a clear vase.

  3. Sylena Badger says:

    I take cheap flip-flops and let my daughter tie the split balloons to them. When she is done, the flip-flops are bright and quite pretty for summer wear to the pool.

  4. kev says:

    I’ve seen great juggling balls made by filling sand into snipped balloons and then putting these inside more balloons, until there’s a few layers of rubber and all the open bits of each balloon are covered by the solid pieces of the next balloon.
    Assuming that the water balloons are not very split, I think if you were careful with the first balloon, or put two together before filling with sand, it would work with ‘used’ water balloons.
    Or you could use a whole, un-used balloon just for the first sand-filled one and then wrap with the used ones.

  5. Shorty says:

    When I make jewelry, I use them as sort of thimbles to grip beads easier.

  6. Alice says:

    The elastic bands idea is better than you think – loads of tiny brightly coloured ones would be really good for braiding hair the way black kids often do, in lots of tiny rows close to your head.

    A tiny coloured elastic band goes on the end of each braid, and the ends of these balloons would be perfect.

  7. Sydney says:

    I was thinking buying a cheap picture frame and covering it with the balloons. I think it would look amazing and be a great gift!

  8. maria amidon says:

    my daughters are in beauty pageants like toddlers and tiaras so i was thinking one of the competition catagories are recycle wear now i came up with an idea to hot glue unblown balloons to a pair of shorts and top or a sundress, then tie balloons around a pair of sandals and figure something out for the hair does this sound like a good idea or what?

  9. Anonymous says:

    What about buying eco friendly reusable water balloons instead?
    Rebecca



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