TLC Craft Wars Experience Recap

So, last night my friend Beth from Home Stories A to Z and I were on Craft Wars. The above face pretty much sums up what I thought of our hard work. Oh what a shame. I'm disappointed because I think we could have ROCKED the second challenge. But both Beth and I were emotionally, physically and mentally SPENT by the end of the hour. You can't really tell on camera but I was just in a daze for the rest of the day processing everything. I actually might have literally passed out if we had to go another five hours.

I'll do a little recap of what led to the disaster below. Starting with the beginning. Hello! It's me, Kathleen Frances from Harrisburg, PA, getting ready to stab my competitors with a knitting needle. We had to do our own makeup BTW. I was super disappointed about that. I did make my clothes for the show (sweater from Anthropologie) I have the shorts pattern if anyone is interested. We taped 2 months after I had Henri so I was so nervous about how I'd look. Maybe white wasn't the way to go:P Beth and I both said, "What were we thinking?"

This was the most cringe inducing part of the show for me. When they kept cutting to glam shots of our wine rack. Beth and I were both like "WHY are they 'glam shooting' this monster? They just kept cutting to it spinning and spinning:P Ugh. I'm getting dizzy thinking about it. But I'm getting ahead of myself, 

So we walk in, face the judges. Our challenge is to be to make a wine rack out of pie tins, footballs, forks, turkey basters, acorns, something else I can't remember.

RUN for the challenge materials.

Grab what you can!

Okay, here's the best part of the show. Meet Beth (described as my friend and assistant) and while that is completely true she's so much more. She's this amazing home decor blogger who you should all know by now as Home Stories A to Z. She makes some pretty awesome home decor redos and has amazing decor advice and did I also mention is a funny, kind and fabulous friend to know in person? I said all that during my interview but they cut it out in the show:(

I'm explaining to Beth what we're going to do.

Beth is worried (rightfully so).

We start cutting.

And cutting....

And cutting....

Still cutting.....You get the picture. It's a lot of pie tins.

Here comes the hot glue.

Ouch! It's really hot! Beth burned herself pretty bad. That wasn't shown.

Now comes the burlap. In the beginning we thought about using rope instead. I think one of the judges Jo also mentioned that she thought that might have been a better idea. In the end we went with the burlap because we thought it would take just way too long to wrap the entire rack in rope. And even though the end result looked really messy I still think the rope was a bad idea. We made the wine rack we originally intended (which I'll be posting later today) and it took four hours to wrap! Now, we used twine which is much smaller than rope and our wine rack was much larger but I still think the rope would have been too tedious.

We are starting to see that things aren't going well.

The judges comes to talk.

I express my doubts.

As do they.

Back to the grindstone.

Wrapping.

Oh dear. It's coming together. We had to cut out two circles due to time. It was supposed to look more like this:

That looks much better. Oh how I wish we could have made this rack. When I was wrapping it I started to get kind of sad that this wasn't the one we had made for the show. But in all, it took four hours to complete together. That's a little insane. What can I say, I underestimated the extent of the work involved which is part of the challenge. See more of this rack along with a tutorial later today.

Thirty seconds left! This was the fastest hour of MY LIFE! No lie. I blinked and it was over. The next time I'm sitting in traffic I'll have to break out some pie tins and hot glue. Problem solved.

Times up! I think the look on our faces says it all.

Time for judging. See how cute the other girls racks were? I think my biggest mistake was thinking that we needed to use the challenge materials as the bulk of the project. The other girls used mostly craft closet materials and incorporated the challenge materials into their project. I think I did the opposite. I used mostly challenge materials and incorporated the craft closet. I used them as the structural basis of the project when they should have supplemented the craft. What can I say, spilled milk.

Showing the judges that the bottles fit (barely). BTW, see my finger? Those pie tins are SHARP! I cut myself and it wouldn't stop bleeding all over the project. I do believe I had some blood on the top. We LITERALLY put our blood sweat and tears into it;P They didn't show any of this which I thought they would but it took literally about eight minutes for people to bandage. I was like "Come on! Let me just bleed!" Plus I tripped over a ruler. I really thought they'd use that clip.

Stephen: "WTF?" Just kidding, he didn't say that:P But I wouldn't have been shocked if he had. The judges were pretty kind considering how hideous the rack looked. I was so worried judging would be more brutal. Thank goodness for small blessings.

More wine rack glam shots. PLEASE STOP!

Who's going home? Yes, no surprise, burlap rags.

I say goodbye and good luck to my competitors. I'm so glad they decided to keep that in. And BTW, it was totally humid that day. Look at that frizz! It like 60 degrees and raining all day in LA. Literally warmer in Pennsylvania. Can I catch a break?! JK.

Then exit.

I talk about how disappointed I am that I didn't get to show what I could do in the master craft round (which I was). But in all, I'm so glad I got to experience being on the show. It was exciting to be on a television set and see how a show is made. Not to mention I got to spend several days with my good friend Beth and honestly, that was the best part. We had good times laughing about the drama of it all.

I won't tell you who won. If you have On Demand you might be able to watch it for yourself so I don't want to spoil it. But the winner did have the cutest little table scape. I definitely see why she won. It's definitely worth seeing! And no! I didn't get to meet Tori! She was sick that day and had guest Steve Piacenza fill in.

Stay tuned later today for the wine rack that we wanted to make AND I made Beth and I two new dresses for the photoshoot. So much fun!