Okay, so as I mentioned in my last post, today they are airing the last two episodes of Craft Wars for the season, so I am going to have a crazy blogathon of recaps today!

Meet your craftestants!

Mini-Me: For obvious reasons, obviously! Actually, also, during RenegadeSF, a girl peeked her head into my booth and asked if I was that girl from CraftWars. Asian, glasses, pigtails, I GET IT. And coincidentally, also from San Francisco. We should never meet. The time-space continuum would implode.

SlumberParty: He makes a lot of neat mini-castle club-houses for little kids and the ultimate SLUMBER PARTY.

GlitterBeast: Okay, this is not meant in a derogatory way AT ALL. I mean “Beast” as in “FIERCE.” She says she loves her some glitter. Watch her throw them signs!

Pop Craft Challenge: Make a toy box out of toys, in 1 hr.

Okay, so, SlumberParty was working FURIOUSLY, talkin’ fast, sweatin’ up a storm, super high energy… part of me was like, “Wow, this guy is really into it!” and the other part was like, “What drugz is this guy on!?”

He was like a crazy nail gun maniac when Tori came to check out his work.

She had the best reaction ever.

Onto the judging!

SlumberParty was up first. His toy box was kinda weird. I can’t even really describe it. It was like a sort of cube shaped thing with stuff all over it and a flap top. Okay, shows you how much I pay attention sometimes…this whole time I thought that the blue shape in the back was a weird mutant person with funky hand syndrome, but it’s actually the word “TOY.” OKAY DUH, ME!

He had covered the sides of his box with felt, and the judges are always getting on people’s cases about how they should stop avoiding paint.

GlitterBeast was up next with her Robbie the Rainbow Robot toy box with storage in body and in head.

I think Stephen was feelin’ those glittervibes BIG TIME.

BUT, he hated her use of spray glue to adhere the glitter. He suggested white glue was best.

Jo:”I’m not concerned. It’s just glitter!”

Erica: “I AM CONCERNED. GLITTER WILL GET EVERYWHERE.”

Stephen: I grew up with glitter all over me, and look how I turned out!

Erica: EXACTLY.

MiniMe made a box that looked like a monster, so that kids could have fun feeding it and clean up at the same time.

Again, the judges took issue with her using felt to cover a surface as opposed to painting it. Also, they never understand why people use spray glue instead of fabric glue when gluing fabric.

PACK UP YOUR GLUE GUN, SLUMBERPARTY. We don’t like sarcasm around here.

Master Craft Challenge: Make a pet mansion out of pet stuff in 5 hrs.

P.S. Tori’s REAL pet CHICKEN Coco is judging you.

MiniMe’s plan was to make a modern multi-pet condo. GlitterBeast’s plan was to make a glitzy princess pet castle. I liked this little piece of wisdom from GlitterBeast.

MiniMe wanted to wall-paper her pet house with fabric. She must have really polite pets, cuz my dogs would drool, eat, barf, and wipe their eye boogers on those walls in 2 seconds.

Meanwhile, nothing gets past Tori’s eagle eye.

Check out this mat that GlitterBeast wove out of pet leashes. Cool, right? I don’t know why she was spray painting it black, though, espesh cuz the black was not covering very well…. how about … PINK!?

But the paw-print stamp she made out of sponges and foam core is pretty awesome. Props, boo.

JUDGING BEGINS. GlitterBeast is up first with her pink and black glitter castle.

Sorry the photo is lame. It was hard to get a shot of the whole thing. Inside, she had also made a pretty nifty doggie dining table with a dog-toy base and an acrylic top. Plus I think she made a lamp, which they showed about 2 seconds of while she was making it, and I can’t tell if it made it into the final mansion or not.

The over-arching comment about her pet palace was: LOVE ALL THAT GLITTER. But hate all that spray glue.

Here is Mini-Me’s modern pet condo. She kinda ran out of time to decorate the top floor, but she covered by saying she wanted to keep it minimalistic up there because that was the cat area and cats are boring.

Stephen pulled out his favorite pet-pun of the episode.

MiniMe was chastised for not really using the challenge materials as much as GlitterBeast, but Erica still really preferred MiniMe’s modern aesthetic and poo-poo’d the Glitterati.

But in the end, glitter wins, don’tcha know?

Sorry, MiniMe. I’ll see you at the Beverly’s in Daly City.

Best mail in the history of mail!!!

Thank you, Gabby!

I want to hire Gabby to design t-shirts. She has that real-deal Girl Magic!

p.s. Tomorrow they are airing the LAST 2 episodes of Craft Wars. The season is over already, and I only re-capped the first 2 episodes? AHHHH. BLOG FAIL. Tonight my goal is to bang out a re-cap-athon and get you all so super pumped to watch the last 2 of the season. Let’s see if i can do it! The longest part about doing the re-caps is getting the screenshots and putting captions on them. Ready set go!

I sent in my entry for the Lion Brand Bonbon‘s challenge today!

It took me a long time to even decide what I wanted to do. I finally narrowed it down to two projects: little sparkly gummy bears, or, a sparkly gum-ball birthday cake tissue box cozy.  A quick Twitter poll yielded 100% votes for the gummy bears, so I listened to the people!!! Hairy said that it was a different project than I normally make, which was a good thing. But I said, well, everyone makes amigurumi so while I don’t normally do it, it’s still pretty normal! I figured LB contacted me so that they would get a weird, wacky, wearable project, but I could not deny what The People wanted! Plus, you know me, you can stick a hair clip or pin on anything and wear it! You could make a head band, garlands, pencil toppers. Really, the possibilities with small amis are endless!

I also really liked the idea of creating a project in which you could use all the Bonbons in a single packet and feel like you got a good bang for your buck. (But if you want a yellow/gold gummy bear, you are gonna have to spring for a second pack!)

The tricky part of this project for me was making sure he looked like a gummy bear and NOT a teddy bear. I looked at zillions of pics of gummy bears online, and really, there are all different styles and kinds. But the kind that stick out in my mind are the ones that are kind of long and rectangular and really look like blobs, so there was that fine balance to achieve between blob and bear. I think he came out great!

I’ll post the pattern if LB doesn’t end up choosing it, so you guys will get the pattern regardless :). Stay tuned!

p.s. here’s a pic of some early incarnations while I worked out my plan of attack…

On Saturday, a bunch of us got together at Alamo Square Park (the one from the opening credits of Full House) to have my birthday picnic! It was low-key, everyone shared food, people came and went, it was good times. We should picnic on the regular!

Here’s a funny pic from the start of our day. Get out of bed? No thank you!

Setting up! Yes, Hairy brought fake grass to put on top of the real grass. And there’s my nifty new picnic blanket I got off Etsy made out of vintage sheets on top and a water proof vinyl backing on the bottom.

Nerds, we! Manda bought me that polka dot parasol for my bday, and I bought her those donut sunglasses just for funz.

TiffanyStar!

El Guapo! And Rick in the background.

Bella!

Oliver

Eatin’ stuff.

Afraid of the sun’s mighty rays!

At a certain point in time, it actually got REALLY COLD and windy, and you could see the fog shooting over the sky, so we packed it all in! Champagne, napoleon cake from the Russian bakery, cheeses, berries, cupcakes, brownies, perfect perfect picnic!

I’m excited to announce the next art show I’ll have a piece in! Right up my alley, right? Fun! If you’re in L.A. on August 31st, come on out! I am not sure yet if I’m going to the opening (not sure I’ll have doggie-care hehehhe) but I’ll try to work it out!