I ran into a problem recently, stretching a not so big balloon (9 inch) over a 5 inch playground ball (for both grip and visual appeal).

The frustrating thing was that I knew it should work somehow, since the balloon can obviously be blown up to more than the size I needed, but it kept tearing.

Here is my solution:

• 1. Blow up the balloon fully
• 2. Cut off as much of the neck as possible while keeping the air held in with the other hand using a pinch between fingers.
• 3. Press the ball into the opposite end of the balloon from the cut off neck. Now one hand is on the ball and one is holding the air.
• 4. Instead of holding the air in with a pinch, press and hold against your hand. As air rushes out continue to push the ball. As the last bit of air rushes out, catch the balloon so that at least half of the ball is covered by a double layer of the deflated balloon.
• 5. Make hole a little larger while not letting the balloon slip off the ball at all (an assistant is nice here).
• 6. Starting from the hole, pull down around ball so instead of half of ball being covered with double layer, almost the entire ball is covered with single layer of balloon.