Steff Bomb Throws A Wrench in Thanksgiving on Craft Wars
Last night, Chicago-based toy designer and fierce Jewess, Stephanie Baum (aka Steff Bomb), [interviewed] appeared on TLC’s Craft Wars. Host Tori Spelling was away for the episode, so Steff didn’t get to make any 90210 references during her confessionals. Aside from that, everything went smashingly! Speaking of which…
The title of Steff’s episode was “Pilgrim Plumbing,” and we’ll get to that momentarily. Before the three crafty contestants got to prep their Thanksgiving spreads, they had to get through a “Pop Challenge”. This entailed making a wine rack out of complete and utter crap. Steff took a minimal approach to the challenge, which almost cost her the contest as one of the judges chose to melodramatically smash one of her wine bottles. I’ve since learned that “minimal” is to “crafters” what truth is to the Republican party: something to avoid at all costs and/or bury under a distracting windfall of glitter, bottlecaps and lies. Anyway, back to the episode!
Since one of the other contestants decided to make a wine rack that looked like the Olympic rings covered in used gauze bandages, Steff advanced to the main challenge. For this, the remaining two crafters were given a bunch of bathroom products and access to the MICHAEL’S CRAFT WALL in order to craft up Thanksgiving dinner.
While making a tasty spread out of toilet plungers might phase the squeamish, this was not the case for mastercrafter, Steff Bomb. Throughout Craft Wars’ “Pilgrim Plumbing,” I took photos of my (non-HD) TV with my (non-HD) iPhone because, ya know, I’m crafty too.
Pretend you’re reading a zine on your computer screen. Oh yeah, and for a musical pairing, KICK IT!
Click through for SPOILERS and a WINNING GIF.
SteffBomb’s table… I want to go to there! Also, I’d totally buy fake Thanksgiving foods for decorating my own table. Faux corn on the cob, count me in! (Especially if it comes in a plunger bowl but I’d like green bowls.)
Also, they were totally harsh on her wine holder. It covered the bottle adequately. What were they expecting, a cocoon so large that you couldn’t tell what the bottle was? Although from your analogy of minimal in crafting, perhaps that is what they were expecting. Lady No. 1 should have just turned her frayed fabric into cocoons. Brilliant!
And at the end, they seemed excessively harsh of her “non dressed up” mantle. She made a frickin fire out of frickin gloves! Plus, her candles were super cool and those simple toothbrush frames were brilliant! It was more dressed up than Lady No. 2’s hanging thing in front of the mantle…
I should have high fived my tv & hoped she somehow felt the high five through the wonders of the universe in recognition of her awesomeness. In fact, I might re-watch the episode just to high five her whenever she does something fantastic like that. Corn on the cob, high five! Turkey, high five! Victory celebration, high five! Commenting on never paying the rent on time, high five! Being enthusiastic when everyone else is all “oh noes, stress!”, high five! In other words, I might break my tv from all the high fives.
@crazylikeafox11 I totally agree that at times the judges harshed on Steff in a way that didn’t seem to fit with the overall mood of the episode. But if you look at the screen while much of the critique is being given, the judges are off-camera. For instance, it’s a shot of the contestant reacting to the feedback while we HEAR the judge talking.
A LOT of that talking felt (to me) like it was scripted and added in later. Maybe they said something similar during the contest, but it wasn’t as clever or clear. Or, once the winner was determined, the producers decided they needed to advance the plot in different ways. All reality shows do this sort of thing, but the judges on this one need to practice practice practice because it just sounds like they’re reading cue-cards.
Then again, reality TV is influencing reality to the point where people in real life have ’emotional interventions’ like on TV, so maybe soon we’ll all start talking like we’re reading off cue-cards…
Yeah, I noticed that it seemed like they were reading cue cards at times. But I think what you’re getting at is that while I high five my tv, I need to take time to flick the judges in the head when they sound like robots. Done & done! 😛
You know what show is the WORST with that? San Francisco’s Oddities on the Science channel. New York’s Oddities is FANTASTIC. Like, I wish the half hour was two hours. The shop owners are intelligent and seem genuinely passionate for odd stuff. Conversely, SF is repped by these passionless tattoo-foreheaded obviously cue-card reading scripted shopkeepers. Ugh!
I watched part of another episode thinking it would be the Stephbomb one but alas it wasn’t. One big takeaway is Tori Spelling looks so fucked up. I mean I have always found her to be disgusting, what with the 20 inch space between her gross fake boobs but man she looks like, well a man. Anyways I finally caught the Steph show and it was badass, she rules. Anyone know where I can get a pie tin/burlap wine holder though?
Because clearly I ask the most hard-hitting questions, your adoring public wants to know if you ever get bored and color in your Wonder Woman tattoo? I would if I were you. Rainbow one day, various shades of green the next. It’d pretty much be a mood tattoo. I’d probably also tell people that it works just like a mood ring and randomly changes on its own.