Renegade Craft Fair: Holiday Austin

It is so so busy around the house these days - mostly because we are getting ready for the Austin Holiday Renegade Craft Fair.  Yahoo!  This will be our 3rd Renegade Craft Fair and I love, love, love. It. The first time, I nearly cried at all of the wonderfulness there was to see.  It is free and so worth it!  Please come and find us in booth #67, across from Stella the Airstream trailer (aka Wondercraft).

Here is one of our hot items you can find at the show...

Back to work!


xoxo

Owls Coloring Page: Day 7 of 7

Free coloring pages every day for a week!  That was REALLY fun! <3

Here is the final page: an assortment of my owls.  These would be fun to print on sticker paper or printable shrink plastic.

For those of you who are really into owls, I just made a new set of owl Christmas cards.

And because I love owls myself, I have a bazillion other owl themed goodies in my shop, including this fun owl collage notebook.

xoxoxo

Free Coloring Page Day 6: Abstract

My mom used to draw these coloring pages for me.  It's easy to do it yourself.  Just draw a bunch of wavy lines.

Here is an example of one I colored in a while back.  This a great excuse to try out new supplies and to experiment with color combinations.

xoxoxo

Free Coloring Page Day 5: Monsters

Coloring Page Freebie Day 4 - Flowers

Freebie Coloring Page Day 3

It's day 3 of a week of free coloring pages.  Today's page is a digital drawing, a page from my Cupcake Coloring Book.  In the coloring book, there is a thematic page for each month of the year, featuring the best food ever: cupcakes. 

If you like it, you can buy the download here.  If you prefer to buy the printed book, go here.

Cupcakes All Year Round by Melissa Stewart

And if you are the crafty type, here are a couple of cupcake pages to print out for crafts.

And for you hard-core cupcake fans, here are all of the cupcake themed goodies I have in my shop.

Happy Coloring!

A Week of Coloring Pages: Day 2

This design features of few of my characters called, "Friends." You can add teeth to the flowers if you want.

A Week of Coloring Pages: Day 1

Here is number 1 of a week of Coloring Pages. Enjoy!

Paint Sample Butterflies

While looking for more ways to use up scraps of paint samples left over from various projects, I decided to try this:


All you need is paper and a few supplies: scoring tool, ruler and paper punch. I used a butterfly punch from ek success because it has the antennae.


Here's the project I did with the cards initially: coasters.


Photographing the butterflies is as much fun as making them!






This is a fun and SUPER simple craft. Glue them on cards, magnets... lots of possibilities.

Paint Sample Christmas Tree Card

I have lots of paint sample scraps left over from different projects.



This was a fun way to use a few to make a holiday card. All you need is a circle hole punch (I used 3/4"), glue, and paint sample cards.

Making paint sample coasters continues to be a fun way for me to experiment with different color combinations and to participate in Etsy's regular color specific features.


Yay for paint samples!

September and Drawing Weirdos

September is an exciting month! I had my birthday, and the best present was reaching 1000 sales in my Etsy shop. To celebrate, I am sharing a coupon code for 20% off that you may use all month: CADBLOG20

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Lately, even crafty endeavors have a wishing-for-rain theme.

This guy is a hand cut applique from my series of characters called, "Friends." You can find them exclusively at Green House in Austin right now.

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I love Ed Emberley's approach to teaching drawing. He demonstrates one step at a time. This book is one of my favorites: Ed Emberley's Little Drawing Book of Weirdos.


Now you can learn how to draw a werewolf Ed Emberly style:


Happy Birthday Virgos!

Sewing the Vinyl, Wrecking My Home

A year and a half after moving back to Austin, I have finally begun *seriously* sewing again. The glorious stack of glitter vinyl I've owned for years is unpacked and getting hacked to bits.


After a few failed attempts at making phone cozies from vinyl, 1 tall drink, near tears - I googled "sewing with vinyl." Lots of good advice, why did I wait so long?!?

I chose the method of wax paper on top AND bottom of the fabric. Sigh, sigh, sigh, relief, relief, relief. For your entertainment, see the before (hideous twisted deformed thing), middle (wax paper just on top) and after - which you can see here.


These are a special little batch of geekery for an upcoming event: Tribe's Indie Comic Art Show. Thanks to Thrillist for giving us a little love today.




On the dark side, it seems our kitty may have snorted up a bit of something from the pile of sewing and crafty goodness. We are experiencing sneezing fits.


Our living room is wrecked by my heart is full. Of glitter vinyl goodness.

Free July 4 Coloring Page

Enjoy!

An Easter Gift for You!

Hello Friends! Would you like a full page sized pdf of this Easter Bunny coloring sheet?



All you need to do is "like" my page Crab Apple Designs on Facebook and send me a message with your email address that you did it. I will email you the full sized pdf of this drawing I did over the weekend.

<3 Melissa

Visit to Lego Land

Recently I had the thrill of a visit to Lego Land! It was an abbreviated visit, but still. LEGOS!

Here are some of the Lego-licious views:









We scored excellent souvenirs from the Lego shop. Here are some of the goodies:



Now I have some inspiration for new Lego crafts. Coming soon... xoxo

Rainbow Love

Yesterday I freaked out over this page from a 1980 Flash comic. Gorgeous. Maybe you can do something crafty with it?


I especially love this era of Flash because the superhero's name is the same as my husband. Not "Flash" but "Barry," hee hee.


A delish rainbow treasury including my recycled paint sample coasters by rockpilewest.



At night I have been working on a rainbow granny square afghan. My first!


More rainbow themed goodness from Etsy Treasuries here.


I also have stuff tagged "rainbow" in my shop: