craft wars and disappointments

so last week, on twitter, tori spelling (yes, i follow her :) tweeted about a new show on tlc that she was hosting called "craft wars" which is due out this summer. and that is when my heart stopped. literally, i think it skipped a few beats, and then my mouth hung open in disbelief and the disappointment hit me.

i make a rule never to post things on this blog about what might be or could possibly be happening to me because i firmly (and irrationally) believe that announcing it will jinx the whatever. sort of how you are never supposed to tell what you wish for when you blow out your birthday candles or your wish won't come true. but since this wish does not seem like it is going to happen, here goes...

back in december, i saw a few tweets about a casting agency looking for crafters for a new show tentatively titled "ultimate craft throwdown" which would be similar to the food network show "cupcake wars". no more brief than that, no producer name, no network name, it was very vague. i am not a center of attention kind of person and i never thought in a million years i would ever do a reality show (even though i am obsessed with all reality tv), but the crafter in me squealed loudly in delight. i thought "i can totally do this, and i can definitely win" seriously, confidence overflowing. because if there is one thing i am not modest about, it is my art.

i went to work designing a crazy cute one sheeter explaining why i would be perfect for the show. and guess what? i wanted something that would stand out from a plain email with jpgs attached. it worked, i got noticed and when i got a CALL from the casting director, the inner crafter in me squealed again, only louder this time! in this day and age of emails and texting, i thought a phone call was huge - she probably just wanted to see that i wasn't some loon. in fact, i think she even said to me, you seem totally normal :) next i was asked to find an assistant for the show if i was chosen and shoot a video outlining our personal styles and what we make, which would be 3-5 minutes long. i picked jenni as my assistant because she has mad styling and crafting skills and i know her enthusiasm for life would shine through on tv. i had never made a video before, but we tacked it on a sunday, and i think it turned out really cute, especially since i am a complete amateur with video editing.

after the video was submitted, i went through a few more rounds of giving information to the casting director and then jenni and i had to sign a ton of release forms for our submission video and then the waiting happened. i knew they were hoping to shoot sometime in february, and i figured they had a ton of submissions to weed through and that was why i wasn't hearing anything, but i still felt really confident that we would be picked. it was that eerie kind of calm confidence too which totally threw me off.

at this point, i still did not know which network wanted this show or who was involved. so that brings you up to last week when i read the tweet and my heart stopped. the show tori was tweeting about is called "craft wars" but in my gut, i knew it was the same show i auditioned for and never heard back from. i still don't know 100%, but i did some snooping and found a press release which talks about the show and references the same casting agency i was working with. such a bummer! so that's it, that's my story.

it would have been such a super cool thing to be part of and now that i know who is involved - oh, forgot to mention michaels is the sponsor as well, i am just so sad about the missed opportunity. being on a reality show for my crafting is something i never gave much thought to, but now that the opportunity was in my view for a short time, i want it so much. i want to be able to show the viewing audience what i can create and my point of view. i think that i have such fresh, new ideas and i would have loved the opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

did any of you apply to the show? do you know who is going to be on it? i figure in this small craft/blogging world that we exist in, we are bound to be familiar with some of the contestants. 

the moral of this novel? every time you read online about this person getting a book contract, or that person getting a licensing contract, or this person being picked to be on a craft reality show, they too have a past filled with rejections that they just aren't talking about.