Did you guys catch Craft Wars on TLC last week? Since tonight is the 2nd episode, I thought I would show you what the first one was about in case you missed it. In a nutshell: it’s not bad, but it’s not great. The show tries really hard to squeeze drama out of something that is not that dramatic. I am interested in what the crafters end up making, but the editing of the show seems weird to me, like a lot of things that people say sound canned and rehearsed and pre-written, and sometimes too catch-phrase-y and pun-y. I think if you watched the show on mute, you would still enjoy it.
The show is hosted by Tori Spelling, who is apparently a long time crafter with her own craft line. I never watched Tori & Dean, so all I know of her is DONNA MARTIN GRADUATES!
Truth be told, I don’t keep up with the who’s who of the crafting world and haven’t heard of the judges or their companies (aside from Michaels, obvs), but then again, judges on a lot of cooking shows are not household names to me either, so I don’t hold that against these guys.
There are three contestants, and the show is divided into two parts: the Pop Craft challenge, which is like the Quickfire Challenge on Top Chef, and then the Master Craft Challenge. In last week’s episode, the pop craft challenge was making a duffel/sports bag out of sports equipment in one hour.
They also have access to a bunch of craft supplies sponsored by Michaels, as well as a construction zone with wood and stuff outside.
The Michaels wall had shelves that went way up high to the ceiling, and people had to climb on ladders to reach the stuff they wanted. This seemed very scary and dangerous to me!!!
The crafters got to bring a helper, who ended up being all men, two husbands and one dad.
A huge point of dramadramz seemed to be HOT GLUE. One lady was making a gym bag with a tennis racket on the bottom for ventilation, and she was hot gluing the racket to her bag, to which Tori seemed extremely concerned, as the judges DO NOT LIKE GLUE STRINGS!!! NO THEY DO NOT.
To which the crafter replied:
I thought E6000 was the duct tape of the crafting world?
Ok, here are the bags.
This first one was very colorful and full of balls, plastic toy balls accenting the shoulder strap, and pom pom trim also accenting the shoulder strap. One of the judges commented on this, and I can’t remember exactly what she said, but it was like, “I just don’t want all these BALLS FLYING IN MY FACE!” The big no-no on on her bag seemed to be that she used ballet shoes as pockets (those yellow things on the sides of the bag), and that they were NOT practical because stuff would just fall out of them. You might think that it’s weird to consider ballet slippers as pockets, but the Tennis Racket Lady ALSO used ballet slippers as pockets!! However, she turned them the other way for PRACTICAL STORAGE.
Most of Tennis Racket Lady’s bag was made out of cheerleader outfits, to which one of the judges said:
The third lady actually made a bag that looked pretty good to me.
Classic, right?
But the back was a hot mess cuz she ran out of time.
Actually the boy judge praised her for installing a zipper in her bag because that can be difficult. I quickly read a conversation on someone’s Facebook page about how EASY it is to install a zipper, thus making this show SO LAMEZ. I am not a seamstress, so installing a zipper DOES SEEM HARD TO ME! I could never survive on this show, since there was a LOT of sewing going on, and I have barely touched a sewing machine because I am afraid it will eat my fingers and leave me with carny hands.
So it ended up being the Tennis Racket Lady who got the boot in the Pop Craft challenge.
When you get kicked off of Craft Wars, Tori tells you, “Pack up your glue gun. You’re done in this craft war.”
…
Given their propensity for witty or pun-filled one-liners, I feel like the writers could have tried a little harder with the good-bye tagline. I mean, the show is supposed to be showcasing creativity! What about,
“Pack up your glue gun. Your work here just didn’t STICK.”
“Pack up your glue gun. We’re pulling the plug on you.”
“Drop your glue gun. You’ve lost this craft war.” (guns….war….see?)
“Pack up your glue gun. Your project lacked integrity due to your reliance on aforementioned and sub-par glue gun.”
Okay, I’m not gonna sit here and think that hard about it, but you see what I’m getting at!
Next up was the Master Craft Challenge. The remaining two contestants had to build a play house out of school supplies. They had 5 hours and a bunch of assistants to do so.
The Lots of Balls Bag lady wanted to build a playhouse that looked like a yellow school bus, and she went cray cray with the Mod Podge. The Football Accents lady wanted to build one that looked like a little red school house, and her hubby was very concerned about it being structurally sound, and it had this crazy framework like a real house. They ran into a slight problemo with the pieces not fitting, but he was on it.
As always, there is a race to the finish. The yellow school bus house had lots of neat stuff to play with inside, but the little red school house was way cuter and polished in my opinion!
Check out the giant No.2 pencil columns! These were apparently a big point of drama for the judges. One judge was all, “I love the pencils, but ACTUALLY putting ‘No.2’ on them just made the whole thing TOO KITSCHY. It’s just going TOO FAR!” (I’m paraphrasing. I watched this a week ago and can’t really remember.) And then the other judge interrupted her and was like, “EEENH! WRONG!! THE DETAIL IS AWESOME!”
And then two seconds later, Tori says that they have a unanimous decision. But they were just totally fighting and disagreeing!
Anyway, the No.2 pencils won the day, and the Football Bag/Little Red School House lady was victorious.
Overall, I just wish the stuff that everyone said seemed more like real talk and less scripted. I know that scenes often take several takes, and the stuff people say starts getting more and more fake, but, I figure there has to be a tiny solution since I don’t usually feel overwhelmed by this when watching stuff like Top Chef or Project Runway.
Anyway, I will probably keep tuning in. I wanna see if someone ever falls off the craft wall ladder.
