Tag: craft wars

Dear Blog, We can die happy now. Love, Me. I still have a few more episodes to complete before the big finish, but I have 4 crochet paintings to finish in 24 hours. I’ll see you on the other side!

Even though I have been DVR’ing Craft Wars on my television, I have also been buying episodes off Amazon.com, so I can play them on my computer and get screenshots that way. It’s much easier for me than taking photos of my television! Each episode costs $1.99, so you can see how much I care about you guys. Two dolla! On with Episode 6! Meet your craftestants. NoFoofin’: She doesn’t over-foof, and she likes to keep it clean. RiskyBusiness: He likes to take chances. PrettyFurniture: She blogs about home design, and there are lots of photos of pretty furniture in her intro. Pop Craft Challenge: Make a lamp out of eye wear and magnifying lenses. I was really smellin’ what PrettyFurniture was cookin’. She started painting lenses with varied mixtures of ModPodge and Rit Dye so the lenses would dry clear but colorful. JUDGING BEGINS. RiskyBusiness was up first. He created a drum-shaped hanging lamp with a flattened-lens mosaic. The judges all seemed to feel that RiskyBusiness had great ideas but was lacking in the execution department. PrettyFurniture was going for an industrial feel, with the highlight being her amazing sea glass made of lenses. Ombre! All the judges were wow-ed by her sea glass concept, but she clearly had not put on as many as she had planned, plus, Stephen felt that the black ball base could have been ombre-fied as well. My thought was that since ombre has been so trendy, that this would have made her a shoe-in to win. NoFoofin’ wanted to represent the nature-y feel of her hometown and grass and flowers. Her lamp looked finished and it seemed like she had executed everything she had planned. I am a bit surprised nobody said anything about it’s slight Tiki vibes…. In the end, PrettyFurniture had to pack up her glue gun. Frankly, I was a bit surprised. I know she hadn’t really finished her lamp, but I thought her technique was really cool, and I would’ve loved to have seen more! Master Craft Challenge: we’re giving you a mattress and a wall. Make a bedroom in 5 hours! Oh yeah, and also use these zippers. K thanks. NoFoofin’s planned theme for her bedroom was “Smoke and Mirrors.” I can’t recall if RiskyBusiness announced a certain theme, but he wanted a 4-poster bed and a zipper rug. Hey check this out: are the judges going to give NoFoofin’ grief for making a pillow with hot glue? Cuz, like, you would probably not want a pillow made with hot glue in your bedroom? Answer: nobody said anything… although I did notice RiskyBusiness using fabric glue instead (FabriTac?) on his rug. Point: RiskyBusiness! Okay check this other thing out: you gotta love NoFoofin’ patterning clay tiles with the bottom of her freaking SHOE! Here’s RiskyBusiness tufting a head board with nuts and bolts and washers. NoFoofin’, are you gettin’ foofy with those turkey-feather flower embellishments? JUDGING BEGINS RiskyBusiness is up first. He explained that he borrowed design elements […]

Meet your craftestants! Peaches: Ok, I know those are probably oranges on her apron, but “Oranges” is kind of a terrible nick name. Her outfit is so sunshiney and cute! Mr. Vivs: This guy is from San Francisco and crafty, so clearly, I made him Vivianna‘s husband. Lady80s: She mentions she has been crafting since the 80s. Me, too! Since this episode is the Christmas Craft special, we were gifted with some costumed carolers. Let it be known, internet, that those genius lyrics were mine, not theirs. Pop Craft: make a wreath out of winter-wear in 1 hr. Let it be known, internet, that those were HER exact words. She has a mouth, and I love her. I wish I understood what Mr. Vivs’ design strategy was. He mentioned he was gonna make cones and put them on an embroidery hoop, but I couldn’t quite put it together in my head. Btw, that is Tori crossing her fingers AND toes for Mr. Vivs. The judges were simply shocked by his change in plans with less than 30 minutes to go. BALLSY. And…. I don’t want to talk about how Team Vivs wasn’t sure if “HOLIDAY” had 2 L’s or not. I get it. You’re stressed out. Your brains are all over the place. I’ll say no more. Let’s turn everybody’s frowns upside down and talk about Peaches’ hot pink finger condoms to protect against hot glue. NEED THESE! STAT! JUDGING BEGINS. Peaches’ wreath was up first, with rolled fabric roses, yarn pom poms, and a lil bling. (I don’t know why my screenshots are so bad….! Some of you are saying that you don’t need to watch the episodes because you enjoy my re-caps, but they seriously don’t do the craft projects any justice, visually!) Mr. Viv’s wreath was next. He ended up wrapping his wreath in fabric and gluing some stuff all over it. Stephen: Crafting is knowing when to take a risk and change your plan. Up next: Lady80s’ wreath: rosettes made of layered sweater, tulle, and newspaper, with sweater rosettes. Erica said, “Your roses look like a ball of socks.” But in the end, it was Mr.Vivs who packed up his glue gun. See you at Zeitgeist, dude. Master Craft Challenge: Make a Christmas tree out of shipping supplies and wrapping paper. Tori intro’d the segment with, “Everybody likes to get packages.” The judges seemed to think this was hilarious. Was that guy the boom mic operator? Was he somebody’s husband? Was his line a funny improv? So mysterious! So, Peaches’ plan was to make a 4-sided tree out of shipping styrofoam, with 50s/60s colorful ornaments made of Christmas cards and more styro, with wrapping/tissue paper roses as the highlight. Lady80s ALSO planned to make 4-sided tree, but made of wood, covered in chalkboard paint, with a skirt made of Christmas cards sewn together. Here’s Peaches painting styro ornaments with a “pouncer (?)” to paint dots. LOVE THAT TOOL. Never heard of it before. Pounce pounce pounce. […]

Ok, these photos are gonna be weird. I took them while sitting on the floor in my livingroom, as I do, in real life, cuz I don’t like couches (I know…), so you will be seeing the tv from my real life perspective since I’m too lazy to stand up. Awesome, right? Let’s go! Meet your craftestants! Giggles: I met Giggles at RenegadeSF. I couldn’t help but notice how cheery and bubbly smiley she was throughout the whole episode (except during The Candlestick Debacle when I could tell she lost her shit for a second). Needles: She mentions in her intro that she always has a pair of knitting needles on her, and her dream is to open up a yarn shop. (Hire me, Needles! p.s. sorry your eyes are closed here…my bad.) DollarDiva: She calls herself Krafty Kathy, but this is my blog, and I give you your nick name! She says that she once decorated a wedding with just stuff from the dollar store. Pop Craft Challenge: Make a keepsake box for kids out of locks and keys in 1 hr. (Everybody kept saying, “WE GOT THIS!!!” on this episode. Everybody got theses, beezies.) Judging begins! Needles is up first. She made a keepsake box inspired by a sandcastle with a bunch of keys on top looking all spire-y. Judges: NEEDS MORE COLOR. TOO MUCH LIKE REAL SAND. Next: DollarDiva. Her keepsake box was inspired by the tooth fairy to put your tooth in. She kept calling it a One Stop Shop for Tooth Loss.  She made her tooth fairy a little tiara out of keys, there was a pillow inside, and there were keys and locks kinda glued on the whole thing. JUDGES: YOUR WINGS STINK. YOU JUST GLUED SOME THINGS ONTO ANOTHER THING. Next: Giggles. Her keepsake box was inspired by a little gnomey-cottage, and half of the roof hinged up to get into it. Judges: YOUR GNOME-HOME IS EMPTY INSIDE.     …   LITERALLY. In the end, the judges felt that Dollar Diva had not used the keys as well as the other ladies, and she had to pack up her glue gun. Master Craft Challenge: Blue jeans, borrowed candle sticks, new invitations, old baby blankets. Create something for a wedding in 5 hours using all the materials. Needles planned to make a photo booth, and Giggles planned to make a wishing tree that would take the place of a guestbook. Needles started to use the jeans to make decorative garlands by cutting out jean circles and sewing them together. Giggles used the invitations to also make decorative garlands and was also cutting out paper circles with a paper punch. Giggles used her jeans to decorate the trunk of her wishing tree, but it was looking too jeany and not so dreamy…hence….solution! Okay, so here is the aforementioned Candlestick Debacle. Giggles’ team was making this message-holder thing by gluing candlesticks together, and her assistant accidentally knocked it over. Giggles was all, “ARE YOU FREAKING […]

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 […]

Crafting is INDEED a beach, and I have been terribly remiss in my Craft Wars recaps!! I wasn’t going to bother trying to catch up or keep up, but after receiving encouraging comments from two Craft Wars crafters and meeting two others in person at Renegade, well now I feel it’s my duty! Let the Craft Wars Re-cap Marathon BEGIN! Let me re-state that it has been a few weeks since I’ve actually seen this episode, so there will be a lot of paraphrasing fun! The craftestants for Crafting’s A Beach were BlogGirl, CraftMyAssOff, and PowerTools. BlogGirl has … a blog. The fact that she referred to her BRAND really stuck out in my mind. You may recognize the guy in the middle as the one who was like, “IM GONNA CRAFT MY ASS OFF” in the teasers for this show, and that’s something you can’t un-hear. PowerTools mentioned her helper was really handy with…power tools, and that’s the only thing I can remember right now. The 1 hour Pop Craft challenge: Make a bird house out of stuff from a junk drawer. BlogGirl took one look at that drawer and said, “What am I supposed to do with a drawer full of CRAP?” and proceeded to whip off her scarf cuz shit was about to get SERIOUS! CraftMyAssOff worked on LIGHTING his birdhouse. WIN! PowerTools wielding a power tool. I was seeing a LOT of glue gun here. I AM LOOKING AT YOU, BlogGIRL! Unfortunately, whenever Tori goes to speak to the craftestants, I feel like this is pretty useless footage. She doesn’t have the same nuggets of wisdom that Tim Gunn has on Project Runway, or that conversational zazz that Alton Brown has on Top Chef, and then the craftestants always look so hurried that they really can’t hold a decent conversation anyway. She does seem very caring and concerned, but it’s too bad she can’t give them little helpful hints. Now let’s get to the judging. Tori and the judges were very concerned about the fact that the birdhouses needed to be functional, i.e. water proof, sturdy, etc., like you would use these in REALITY. PowerTools was first with her playing card bird house. It also had a cluster of keys underneath for wind chimes. Stephen took issue with a bird house having wind chimes. Jo was very concerned about the playing card shingles and their lack of weather resistance. Ok, I didn’t know that Outdoor Mod Podge existed either. Preach it, Jo! (Jo actually always seems really nice, like you’d want her to be your grandma. I like making her sound super tuff, tho. OUTDOOR MOD PODGE. I BUTTAH MAH WAFFLES WIDDIT, SUCKA.) Next up was CraftMyAssOff with his nod to “mid century modern.” If you use astrotuf, you win in my book. I believe Jo did not think the v-shape of the roof was very practical for the rainy season. I didn’t take a screenshot of further commentary on this bird house because I was […]

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 […]