CWTS Competition 2014 Recap
Holy SHIT! Holy shit…. ok, so if you have been following along you know we have been competing in the Creating With The Stars DIY contest hosted by East Coast Creative. Results for the final round went up this morning and, with only 3% between first and second place, we won!
I just want to clarify that it’s a total coincidence that the hosting site has “East Coast” in their name since many people I’ve talked to just assumed this was a Newfoundland or Atlantic Canadian Province only competition (since we are pretty East Coast). Nope, this competition was international!
The last few weeks have been intense. Full of ups and downs, SUPER late nights, big brain storm sessions, and a lot of second guessing and over-analyzing.
We have had a lot of people asking what the grand prize was, so here is the list… It’s pretty frigging exciting:
1. $1000 Visa gift card from ForRent.com – awesome.
2. $500 Wayfair gift card – excited to browse later.
3. Feature in Better Homes and Gardens special interest publication “Make It Yourself” – PUMPED!
Incase you missed it, here is a recap of the projects we submitted for the contest:
Entry Project: Living Room X-Ray Light Boxes
This project got us into the top 12 out of 299 entries, earning us a spot in the actual competition. We have the full tutorial up on the blog already, with a before and after of the living room coming soon!
Round 1: Knockoff
We had to create a knock off of a product. We chose to create a replica of the iconic Herman Miller Nelson Bench. We placed 3rd out of 12 in this round.
Round 2: Paint
Using paint in the project was the only requirement. We created painted placemats and screen printed napkins with fabric paint. Thanks, SAM, for letting us shoot this in your store; we think our kitchen would have been pretty recognizable. We placed 2nd out of 9 in this round.
Round 3: Upcycle
This round was all about turning garbage or useless materials into something useful. We found a bunch of scrap metal in a dumpster behind the local trades collage and decided to learn how to weld in order to make an art piece for Chris’ office. He has been thinking about this for over a year so it was a perfect excuse to do it. We placed 1st out of 6 in this round.
Round 4: Home Decor
The final challenge was a room makeover, so we picked the basement/studio. We have lots of progress and DIY projects to share on this space which will be coming soon. You won’t want to miss it. We will tell you how to make that torched wood wall! We placed 1st out of 4 in this round!
Original contest link with photos here.
Before we leave you, we want to give a few shout outs and thank you’s:
First off we want to say a big thank you and give props to East Coast Creative for putting off the contest and organizing the sponsors, blog stars and all the logistics that go along with putting together a big competition like this. Hats off to you! We want to also congratulate all the CWTS competitors, you all brought it each round. We’d wake up every Monday morning and instantly get anxiety because we kept thinking we were going to be in the bottom three after seeing everyone’s awesomeness.
Thank you to our blog star KariAnne from Thistlewood Farms (T Wood!) for the guidance and inspiration. We would have been eliminated in round 1 if it wasn’t for you politely communicating the level of competition we were going to be up against (and that a tree stump table probably wouldn’t cut it). Thanks for chatting on the phone with us when we needed you to bounce ideas off of or just for plain moral support. If you are ever in Newfoundland, hit us up! You know where we are.
To the amazing and incredible team at SAM Design, thank you so so much for allowing us to take over the store and photograph our painting project in your show room. Thank you also for letting us take what we needed from the showroom to stage our basement, i.e. the Nelson inspired bench since we couldn’t use our own that we made! And of course thanks for sharing the contest links and being there with us from the start. You are all the best.
Another thanks goes out to Uncle Jeff for letting us use his workshop and tools to make our Nelson Bench in an unrecognizable environment. You rock!
Spam (Mike), thanks for the company on the late night dumpster shade missions, being there to bounce ideas off and, of course, thanks for the welding tips and sticking around late to make sure we had at least a few successful welds under our belts!
MASSIVE THANK YOU TO ALL OF OUR FAMILY, FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS. Wow, I must say I am overwhelmed with all the positive comments, all the sharing and voting that went on over the last few weeks (you did vote for us RIGHT??). We appreciate all the support you guys gave. We love you all. Thank you so so much for sharing.
Now we are on to the next project, getting our new blog up and running! We’ve been saying this for a while, we know, but we want to make sure everything is working just right before releasing it! So stay tuned as we have a shit ton of DIY projects, before and afters and other things to share.