Welcome to the Boxwood Cottage!

Sweet & Sinister swap reveal, Halloween decorations and more!

2009-10-24T23:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear readers and fellow bloggers and to my first time of decorating for Halloween here ( it is no tradition in Germany to celebrate Halloween as you might know) and also to my first Halloween swap, as well as to some other news that I'll reveal at the very end of this post, so I hope you'll stay with me until the end, because I have around 20 photos to share with you ( which is also to make up for my long blogging absence again).

The orange candle light in the picture above is the only orange you'll find in my Halloween/Autumn decoration, this year, because firstly it is not one of my favorite colors and secondly it is all about black, white & cream, which pleases me much better, as you will see in the photo below which was my sneek peak photo for my Sweet & Sinister 2009 Halloween swap partner Heather Rowley of Speckeled egg:

I had a tremendous fun in creating pretty Halloweenish items like a goody filled fire cracker, a cone, a black masque, black birds, tags and a soldered pendant etc. for my swap partner and decorated everything that I finished on my vintage mannequin in my attic studio:

I loved the Halloweenish look of my dress form so much that I started making things not only for Heather, but for me too.

And I also decorated one of my vintage silk top hats in Hallween style. Maybe this will attract my favorite vampire Edward? ;-)) Just rightclick on the pictures to enlarge them if you want to see more details.

And closer:

After I finished gathering and creating Halloweenish items for Heather I wrapped it all as sweet & sinister as possible. Heather also wished for some thick German crepe paper and German decorating magazines.

I love silhouette pictures and recently found some pretty old fairytale silhouettes and silhouette postcards at our local flea market so I incorporated them in Heathers swap parcel too.

Below are most of the goodies before the wrapping. I also found a vintage enamel night light candle holder for Heather at our flea market which has a bit orange color around the edges which I found so suitable for Halloween and I thought a tiny bit of orange couldn't hurt he he:

Two weeks after Heather and I had sent off our swap parcels over the big ocean, they arrived at our homes, whoohoo I am so happy with all the great goodies Heather has found and made for me :)

Above you can see the whole lot (click on pic to enlarge) and below some close ups. Sweet Heather has got me everything I wished for, like a cute white feather tree and a beautiful cream colored pumpkin as well as a frozen Charlotte doll. Just look at the sweet little owls the pretty frame and cameo and the gorgeous bracelet with a black rose that Heather made for me:

And I also got one of these fabulous black crows that I just couldn't find here in Germany, but I so wanted one and she didn't even know this, but still send me one, this must have been telepathy :) Thank you so much dear Heather!

In the photo above I have already incorporated some of the goodies in the Fall & Halloween decoration around the mantle in my living room. I love the speckeled egg that she embellished for me with a gorgeous black velvet flower and a fabulous rhinestone button. The girl silhouette that I framed is a scan from a real cut out silhouette from my daughter, made when she was 4 years old.

Lastly the gorgeous white feather tree found the right spot on the left corner of my mantle. I looks almost a bit Christmassy already and I think this photo looks so pretty when enlarged:

And the wonderful cream colored porcelain pumpkin box from Heather got a space on the right side of the mantle:

Following I show you some more photos of my autumn decorations around the mantle:

As you can see it is all about silhouettes and neutral colors:

The mantle is lit by the afternoon sunlight and candles only in these photos:

The day I took these photos the light was so beautiful that I had to take some more photos like the one below of my white glass cabinet:

Here is also a picture of an autmnal vignette on one of my iron tables on the patio, which I created after a walk in the woods:

And now I like to show you something else, we change from Halloween to Christmas decorations. The Christmas ornaments in the photo below are made from paper maché containers from Thuringa in Germany. If you love these nostalgic paper maché Christmas containers as much as I do, I can offer them to you here now: http://boxwoodcottageshop.blogspot.com/ Just in time for Christmas 2009!

These are just a few paper maché ornaments that I embellished to show you what you can make out of them. You'll find many more examples and shapes here:
http://boxwoodcottageshop.blogspot.com/ I'd be happy to see you there!

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Lastly I wish you all a great countdown to Halloween week and of course a very fun Halloween day and I'd be glad if you could find some inspirations in todays post and if you'll let me know what you think of it and leave me a comment.

xoxo Carola

Halloween swap preparations, painting activities and our new kitten

2009-09-19T02:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers. Once again I have to apologize for my long blogging absence. There was so much going on at Boxwood Cottage I'm not sure where to begin. Well I guess I start with the activities in the studio. I signed up for a new swap through the Year of color blog, it is the Sweet and Sinister swap. Seeing as I'm not that fond of the color Orange and the Sweet & Sinister Swap is all about Black, White & Cream colors it is the perfect Halloween swap for me. I started by embellishing some of my little top hats and decorating them in the studio, but for now I can't show you more of the things I prepared because I don't want to spoil the surprise for my swap partner Heather of Speckeled Egg. One thing I can tell you is that it has a lot to do with Silhouettes, because I love them very much and so does Heather :)

I also soldered some pendants for Halloween that I'll show you in my next post, as well as what I sent to Heather. One thing I can show you today is my first pair of soldered earrings. I used small, old glass marbles and really love to wear these.

For the next finished project that took some time we have to go downstairs into the living room.

The painting bug has bitten me again. I remebered an old 3 pieces shelf lying around in the basement, which I had hanging in my former kitchen in the old cottage. I had not found the right space for it since I moved to Boxwood Cottage in 2005. Well suddenly it came to me that it would look great painted in white and I also had an idea on where to hang it up, so I started painting:

I also painted a brown letter white and placed it on the shelf and tried to hang it all on the screws from the mirror that hung on the wall before, of course that didn't work out lol

So I needed the help of my Dad to hang it up on the space over my willow sofa:

Thank you Dad for hanging it up for me! Then the fun part was to decorate it. I'm not sure if I'm done with it yet, but for the moment I think it is okay and I'm happy with the look of it. My eyes really needed a new sight in the living room.

Here is an over all look of the redecorated sofa corner:

I also painted the shutter in the corner beside the window:

You can even see the reflection of the shelf in the golden mirror over my faux wooden mantle (made for me by my Dad in 1999) which was the first piece I painted white in 2006. Since then I have to paint something more white every few month lol it is like an addiction.

Beeing in paint mood I continued and painted a small round wooden table, also made by my Dad and the little shelf in the shady corner, which was made by Dad too and the plant stand below in white and I think it was all worth the effort because it all fits together now. (Right click on the pictures to enlarge them and see the big version with all the details if you'd like)

So now we come to the little thing that took up most of my spare time since my last post. 5 weeks ago we got a new kitten. He was only 8 weeks old when we got him, but his mama didn't want her babies anymore, she was much too young when she got her babies, still almost a kitten herself with 6 month of age.

I present to you our new family member Riley. A few weeks ago he was not more than a hand full of fur:

But meanwhile he has almost doubled his weight. And he loves to discover the cottage.

Of course I made him a cosy bed in a basket, but he always prefered to lay in one of my boxes with craft supplies when he took a nap in the studio so I gave him his own cardboard box cover to sleep in and he loves it better than any other place lol

Thing is that at the beginning he used only half the box, but meanwhile he's almost growing out of it.

Say bye bye for now to our dear reader little one!

So what have you been up to since the beginning of August?

Today is a wonderful late summer day and I'll better go out in the garden now, before it is getting dark again.

Have a wonderful end of summer anyone!

xoxo Carola

P.S.:

Thank you all very much for the congratulations on my Artful blogging article, your comments were a pleasure to read and very much appreciated!! I further wish a warm welcome to my new readers , I'm so glad that you found me through Artful Blogging and I hope that you are here to stay and follow the activities at Boxwood Cottage!

Blogging for Bliss party & Artful Blogging article

2009-08-04T01:06:00.000-07:00

Looks like one party is following the next one in no time here at Boxwood Cottage lately so today I like to welcome you to the "Blogging for Bliss" party!

This event is hosted by Kari over at http://www.artsymama.com/ in honor of the book release of Tara Frey's book "Blogging for Bliss" in which she included many talented bloggers of our beautiful blogging community of artists, crafters and creatives of all kind. It's a guide about crafting your own online journal aka blog. Congrats to Tara and all the talented bloggers who made it into her book! You may wonder why I show you a picture of the Artful Blogging Fall 2009 issue here, well I got to explain you:

I lately found out myself how exciting it is to have something published, well not only one picture like I had before, but a whole article! Last year in December Staci Dumoski of the beautiful Artful Blogging Magazine from Stampington contacted me through an e-mail to ask if I would like to write an article about my blog and send pictures to Artful blogging to get published in the Summer issue 2009. Of course I was delighted and mega excited with the thought of it and told her so. Shortly after I sent my article to Staci she left Stampington and Christen Olivarez was responsible for Artful Blogging and my article and due to an overload of articles they got, my article had to be postponed to the Fall issue which is on the news stands in the USA since August 1st! My oh my I was so excited when another blogger from the US commented on my blog that she had found me through Artful Blogging. Then some days later I got my own copy in the mail *Oh Bliss* and now I like to share the photos of my first ever published article with you :

You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them to see more details. I wrote about how I came to blogging at a time it wasn't very popular here in Germany yet and how it has made me a much more creative person than I had been ever before through the contact with other creative souls, well bloggers in this case and through swaps/trades of course. It is no secret to my faithful blogging friends and readers that I love to swap. It is something so beautiful and rewarding and you make so many new creative friends from all over the world that inspire you.

P.S.: Oops I just found a mistake that I made in my AB article, I actually started blogging in September 2005 not in 2006, well that just shows how quickly time passes when you are creative and blog lol

Bloggers like my inspiring and talented artist friend Ulla Milbrath and famous Sally Jean Alexander who's most inspiring book "Pretty little things" I only found through the many recommandations on other blogs, inspired me to try myself in soldering jewelry, something I would have never dreamed of doing and which quickly became one of my favorite creative pasttimes.

Thank you Staci, Christen and all the creative staff at Stampington for publishing me in your beautiful Artful Blogging magazine!

Just lately my blogging and flickr friend Anja of Matida's Design sent me a sweet creative parcel

it included a bunch of small watch crystal glasses, which I used to make these charms/pendants:

Here are some more of my latest soldered jewelry pieces:

Thank to you everyone who read my post to the end and who came to my little "Blogging for Bliss party". I'd love to hear/read from you! There is a link on Kari's blog side bar with all the many paticipants in this event that you can visit and get to know if you'd like to.

I also like to thank all the party people from the "Where bloggers create party" that visited me and left me such sweet comments about my studio on my last post.

And lastly to those of you who know/heard/read about the sad sudden death of our beloved little tomcat LV , through flickr or my cousin Stefanies post, thank you so much for all your comforting words, they mean a lot to me! I'm not going to post about it here any further, because I want my blog to be a happy place, a place of Bliss!

Until next time here at Boxwood Cottage I wish you a wonderful time and hopefully some more sunny summer days!

xoxo Carola

Where bloggers create party!!!

2009-07-24T03:39:00.001-07:00

Update! Today is the day of the "Where bloggers create" party!

It's organised by Karen Valentine (such a beautiful name!) over at http://mydesertcottage.blogspot.com/.
Seeing that I just happened to post pictures of my studio in all my last posts (there are lot's of pictures please scroll down) I spontaneously decided to play along. What a fantastic party theme!!! Isn't it? :) I so love seeing other people creative spaces.

If you too have a vintage inspired studio/craft space please consider to join my flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/vintage_inspired_studios/
I'd love to have you in the group!

To see more photos of my studio all in one space please visit my flickr photo stream "In my studio" here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/boxwoodcottage/sets/72157603980980932/

or see my last blog posts!

Please visit Karen's blog http://www.mydesertcottage.blogspot.com/ to find a list of all participants!

Have fun and a beautiful weekend dear blogging friends and readers!

xoxo Carola

For garden lovers, vintage lovers and all creative people

2009-07-18T22:29:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage everyone! I just realised that I haven't done a post in July yet, although I have so many new things to share with you. Last weekend I had my very creative 12 years old niece here for a sleep over and I thought I would teach her a few creative things but instead of it she teached me lol, at first how to make beautiful bead bracelets and then how to make fluffy paper pompoms out of paper napkins. I'm glad I had these soft pink paper napkins in the house because I think they turned out the most beautiful. Don't they look great hanging in my studio? We sure had lot's of fun making them!

I also like to share with you my latest etsy purchase. It's the wonderful wooden shoe form in the picture above. I'm so happy to have finally found one, because I was searching for it on flea markets forever and had no luck. You must know that my paternal grandfather was a shoemaker so I just felt that I had to have one, right?

Now to the garden. We have finally set up my new rose arc in the Boxwood Cottage garden, as you can see in the photo above. Next week we are going to plant the new roses and I hope it is already covered at least half of it with beautiful roses next summer!

The beautiful pink Leonardo da Vinci rose is already blooming beside of the new rose arc. I had to give her some hold with the scrolly iron heart, but I think it will need an obelisk next season. The beauty that you see in the photo below is my David Austin rose "Heritage":

Further I like to show you some beautiful bells blooming in my garden, like this wonderful Foxglove:

Oh and I forgot to show you my "Wife of bath" another English Austin rose:

But now back to the bells, I love this one, it's called Campanula punctata:

And my absolute favorite bellflower is this beautiful pink biennial "Campanula medium", for I so love her huge bells:

Our tomcat LV is also enjoying the summer in Boxwood Cottage garden. He turned one year old on June 29th and he's very proud of beeing a man cat now that can even climb up trees to see the foxgloves blooming from close up:

From one of my favorite places the garden we go back to my next favorite place my studio in the attic of the cottage. This is my solder work desk:

With a little help of Sally Jean's turtorial in her book Pretty little things I recently created my first soldered and collaged glass house:

Do you like it?

I think the Vintage Forget me not postcard is so enchanting from both sides that I just had to use it. I love the calligraphy script on it!

I rearranged a lot in my studio lately so I like to show you some more photos of it:

Here is where I'm happy!

You can see more photos of my studio in my flickr photo set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/boxwoodcottage/sets/72157603980980932/

if you'd like to!

And lastly just a little studio vignette to finish off this post:

And by the way a big thank you to the over 70 visitors that came to my Mad tea party last month, my little mad hatter nephew and I were delighted to see all your sweet comments! :)

I hope to read you again soon here at Boxwood Cottage and wish you all very happy summer days!

xoxo Carola

Welcome to the mad tea party!!!

2009-06-27T05:58:00.000-07:00

Update! Update! It's late, it's late, but:

He's here, he's here, the mad hatter finally joined our party!

He showed us some tricks like the one with the pending cane:

And finally got some cake and tea, he came last minute so had to be satisfied with what was left.

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Don't forget to click on the pictures to enlarge them and see all the details!

Everyone is waiting for today's mad tea party to start!

It's time, it's time! But ~ oh no ~ someone is late! Who is it then?
Well it's not the hare, he has his pocket watch and was on time!

The mad hatters accessories are there, see there is his top hat, the white gloves and his cane, but where is the hatter?

The birds already used his hat to build their nest upon it!

Alice is waiting, she's very hungry and wants to eat from the mushrooms again!

The hare is hungry too he want's some cherry tart!

Well if the hatter's not on time it's not our fault, let's not wait any longer and start the party now!

Alice totally agrees with the hare.

They will just have to start the party and will sure have as much fun without him!

Alice is going to eat a white mouse first. EEK!

It's not so easy to decide what to eat, there is yummy striped peppermint candy and a strawberry tarte as well as sweet toad stools and chocolate and green eggs and much more dainty stuff, it's mouth watering! Everything seems to say Eat me and Drink me!

So they are eating and drinking until it's time to finish the party and go back into the rabbit whole.

If you want to continue the mad tea party just hop over to Vanessa Valencia's blog A fanciful twist who is having a fabulous mad tea party today and she has lots and lots of people celebrating with her, just look at that long list of party people in her side bar!!!

Have a fantastic party everyone, and please let me know that you were here by leaving me a little comment!

Until next time at Boxwood Cottage!

xoxo Carola

There's a party coming up!

2009-06-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

and you are all invited!

read more about it here: http://afancifultwist.typepad.com/a_fanciful_twist/2009/05/a-party-a-party-a-mad-and-gloriously-enchanted-party-a-secret-revealed.html

I hope to see y'all here on Saturday for a Mad Tea Party post!

xoxo Carola

White cabinet, May basket swap, Roses & more Studio pics

2009-05-31T02:41:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers!
Before my favorite month of May is over I like to share with you what's new around the cottage.
I better warn you that this is a quite long post again so go grab a pot of tea or coffee and make yourself comfortable in front of your screen.
I finally found some time to paint my glass cabinet in the living room white. I wanted to do this for ages and I'm so glad it's finally done and I'm very pleased with the result:

In the cabinet I stored all my favorite vintage rose dishes. I find the overall look very summery and fresh now :)

I think it matches so well to my white wooden mantle and I like the contrast to the dark vintage Adler sewing machine below, although I'm currently searching for a chest of drawers which matches with the cabinet and once I found it I'll bring the sewing machine upstairs in my studio.

The huge pink roses in the photo below are freshly picked "Constance Spry" from my garden:

If you click on the next picture to enlarge it (which you can do with all of my pictures as you might know by now) you can see the reflection of my garden in the glasses:

Talking about the garden "Contance Spry" an English David Austin climbing rose is now in bloom and I called the picture below "Heaven's gate"

My darling Eden 85 rose aka Pierre de Ronsard has also started to flower:

And the soft pink Clematis "Josephine" in the next photo is slowly fading, but still quite beautiful:

The soft purple Delphinium has also started to blossum in a pot on my deck:

And Geranium x magnificum is in full bloom in my rose border now:

The pink Lupine in the shady border of my backyard has just opened the first blossums:

This soft pink beauty is an historical gallica rose called "Belle Isis":

And lastly another picture of a "Constance Spry" flower close up:

I could show you tons of pictures from my flowers and cottage garden but I don't want to bore you with it so I better continue with pictures from the May basket swap (organized by Kari Ranstroem over the Year of color blog). Below is my gorgeous May basket from the talented Lorraine Lewis of the blog Paperbird. Lorraine and I agreed to give eachother some more time that's why we are quite late whith receiving our parcels. I told her that I'd love to find or get a Vintage sewing basket and I was so happy when I opened my parcel (a huge parcel btw) and saw that she did indeed find one for lucky me :) (click on photo to enlarge it):

It was filled with a beautiful whimsy Millinery nest with the most lovely Millinery and gorgeous pink wooden spools and sheet music paper in a roll tied with a bow and an enchanting rhine stone button.

I was literally in Paper bird heaven while I unpacked all the treasures dear Lorraine has gathered for me. Once again I was spoiled rotten by my swap partner and I'm so very thankful to Lorraine that she has made this swap so special for me, she really did an amazing job with it! Here is the whole swap content, which was hard to get in one picture and I love every itsy bitsy bit of it:

The parcel smelled divine from a parfumed soap wrapped in the most beautiful bird nest paper. I also love the pretty paper lace doilies, which I have never seen around here in Germany so far only much bigger ones and never in pink.

Lorraine also sent me this absolutely enchanting jewelry holder (I love the lil birds sitting on it) and aren't the Vintage book pages in the background just so delightful?

Part of the pretty bird images, seed packet and tags etc. seen in the photos above were in the pockets of this fabulous booklet that Lorraine created for me:

I also got one of her awesome collages with a more than fitting poem because I sure love pretty things and papers and ribbons better than diamonds! And it's so true about the collections and inspirations too!

Unfortunately I can't show you what I sent to Lorraine yet because she only received the paper part (I sent two parcels) of our swap yet, but not the parcel with Maybasket itself and all the German sweets - oh I forgot to mention, that we swapped German/American sweets too for our girls and my daughter was more than happy with the yummy US treats she received. I think the US custom office might have catched the parcel ( I had to pick mine up from the German custom office too) but I hope very much she'll get it soon now *fingers crossed*!

Last Sunday I was at a flea market in the countyside whit my sister where I found this sweet Vintage toy sewing machine as well as the other sewing items and turqouise tins, all for a bargain price. It all matches very well with the turqouise wooden spools which I purchased from Ebay lately:

To finish this post I have some more pictures from my studio. I always liked to decorate the sky/ceiling of my rooms too, so I took some photos of the decorated studio sky to inspire you, like the glitter star garland from my far away friend Madai for example with my old glitter moon. The moon and the stars are brighten up the night sky over part of my studio world.

(click on picture to enlarge!):

And the bird cage where the birdies can come an go as they wish because the door is always open:

And I also love to use umbrellas to decorate my studio sky, like this pink chinese paper one:

Or my so called grey Mary Poppins umbrella that I got from Lisbeth Dahl a Danish Designer.

Lastly a picture of the flea market finds from my last post which are now incorporated in my studio too, like the small chest of drawers from a watchmaker. I filled one of my tophats with pretty paper rolls and a millinery flower. Can you feel my love for top hats? I'm going to fill the other one with the pretty bird nest I just got from Lorraine in our swap.

Btw I opened 2 new flickr groups this month one is called "Vintage inspired studios/craft rooms" and the other one "Cottage gardens" both groups that I missed on flickr so far and that are sure to inpire you with all the gathered beauty, have a look here if you'd like http://www.flickr.com/groups/vintage_inspired_studios/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/cottage_gardens/

and feel free to join if you have something to share as well.

I wish you all a very happy pentecost weekend and a fabulous start in the month of June!

Until next time at Boxwood Cottage

xoxo Carola

Garden and studio news

2009-05-03T22:45:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage everyone!
We had the warmest April since weather records here in Nothern Germany and the garden has changed so much during the last month. My bleeding hearts are blooming since 3 weeks and the Alliums are already in bloom as well. Normally they bloom a few weeks later.

I enjoy my Alliums so very much year and year again and can't wait for them to become bigger and bigger until they have the size of the head of a new born child.

Also the lilac I've planted in a huge pot on my deck is blooming beautifully this year and the clematis alpina at the fence to my neighbors garden too! They both are blooming in a soft pink and look so great together.

Here is a picture of my potting corner which I use a lot these days, I have already planted most of my summer blooms in hanging baskets and terracotta pots and have spread them out all over my little garden. As always you can click on all of my photos to enlarge them and see more details.

Below is the view from behind the sitting area in the shady back of my garden, under the Maple tree, in direction to the cottage. This is the best place to sit and chill when the temps get really hot.

The last week we luckily had a few rainy days after 4 sunny and dry weeks and the garden became so very green. I soon have to cut all my boxwood hedges again, which is a lot of work because I have so many of them in the front and back yard.

Well now let's change the subject from the garden to my studio. I'm never sure, what I love more, the garden or the studio but I think it depends of the weather these days. In winter it is my studio for sure.

I embellished a papier maché heart to make a gift box for the jewelry I made and soldered for my friends 15 years old daughter's confirmation yesterday.

Luckily for me and her she loved it all and wore her new jewelry right away :)

In the next photo you can see a new addition to my studio. It's an old printers drawer that my mum has used in the 70ies and 80ies. I can still remember it hanging on the wall in our living room when I was a teenager. She had it hidden in her basement ever since. I think it is a faboulus storage for all the small things in the studio. Instead of hiding them in boxes I can see them all the time now and can be sure to be inspired.

I have just started to fill it up and bring it back to life again.

Last Sunday I finally hit our outdoor flea market again. We had beautiful sunny and warm weather and I found some awesome treasures. I didn't find the things I was searching for though, like old sewing baskets filled with wooden spools and beautiful scissors and buttons, but I'm very happy with my finds all the same:

I especially love the wooden chest of drawers which I think was used by a watch maker in it's former life. I'm going to use it to store all my glasses and jewelry bit's in the studio in it.

I'm also quite fond of Vintage top hats. This one is my second now and it came in the original gorgeous Vintage box:

I further found lot's of small things like old lace pieces and cabinet cards and the Vintage chocolate box filled with small treasures:

So that's about it for this post. In my next post I'm going to share with you the may basket I made for my swap partner as well as the one I got from her and of course all the other garden and studio news.

I wish you all happy May days dear blogging friends and readers!

xoxo Carola

Easter eggs, decorations, swaps and spring garden pictures

2009-04-11T01:04:00.000-07:00

Fröhliche Ostern, happy Easter dear blogging friends and readers!

I made these vintage inspired foil Easter egg using a papier maché egg container. At first I covered it in foil paper and then I embellished it with paper lace, fabric lace, Dresden foil paper trims, vintage millinery etc.pp to my hearts content. I embellished the inside too with 45 years old vintage paper lace and a vintage German paper scrap. This scrap with a bunny driving the egg carriage inspired me to make my own bunny egg carriage.

Here you can see how it turned out. The Dresden bunny is the proud driver and the carriage is pulled by the sweet lamb that I got from my dear friend Madai:

My mum loved Madai's sheep so much that I had to get her one too and I also made her an egg carriage with a bunny for her b-day at the end of march.

I wrapped all the presents for my mum's birthday with my favorite papers, tags and millinery and gathered them in a vintage basket to give them to her. She loved it all :)

I further created the charm bracelet in the next photo for a private Easter swap with my blogging friend Anja from Matilda's Design in Munich:

And it was a pleasure to wrap all her swap goodies in pretty pink Easter style. Of course she got

a foil egg too!

Another thing that I created lately is a little reliquary shrine with a tiny frozen Charlotte doll:

Well I think you know me good enough by now to know that I just had to embellish the back side of the reliquary pendant too. I like that like this it looks pretty even when the pendant turns around which happens quite often when it hangs from my neck.

The garden season has fully started here in Germany. Since the beginning of April it's getting warmer every day. Here is my Easter vignette on one of my garden tables on the deck:

LV our little tomcat and I are enjoying the warmer temperatures and to see how everything is getting greener and more beautiful every day. This is my littel potting area, as always you can click on all my photos to enlarge them and see all the details:

For my last birthday I got a Camelia from my mum. It's a wonderful plant with large pink filled blossoms that are in bloom now:

After a hard spring rain shower lot's of flowers fell down and I gathered them to lay a Camelia heart on a garden table:

Another fave spring flower of mine it the filled double narcissus tazetta. Doesn't she make you thing at Vanilla ice cream with passion fruit sorbet too?

Everything is growing so fast now and coming along nicely in my big rose border. Not long from now and all my beautiful Allium bulbs and roses will be in bloom again:

LV has found his favorite spot in the garden. He loves to lay in this huge terracotta pot and I call him my little pot flower when he lays in there:

The white star magnolia is also blooming in my garden at the moment, white perfection, wouldn't you agree?

Lastly I like to show you my Auricula in bloom, I'm totally in love with her!

Well my friends, thank you so much for stopping by and visiting Boxwood Cottage and if you even take the time to leave me a little comment so that I know that you have been here, I would appreciate that so much in this busy world with new beautiful blogs popping up every day.

Have a happy Easter everyone and a beautiful spring time!

I'll be busy in the garden now Oh and I have to prepare the maybasket swap!

xoxo Carola

So many things to show

2009-03-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

Hello dear blogging friends!

I'm still alive, just very busy and the day never has enough hours for me. To make up for my long blogging absence I brought you lots of pictures that will hopefully inspire you!

This is my inspiration jar or like Janice from Paper Valise called it an inspiration terrarium .http://papiervalise.typepad.com/scissor_variations/2009/03/inspiration-terrarium.html It works like this, you grab a glass container and sit down at your work space. There you just grab all kind of things you find around you in your arms reach and put them in the glass container and là voilà your inspiration terrarium is ready. I thought this was a great challenge, so I happily played along. Have you discovered Janice's blog yet? It is so ivery nspiring, she is full of fab ideas and I just love it! Go discover her here and tell her that I send you over: http://papiervalise.typepad.com/scissor_variations/

Some more photos

from my inspiration jar:

So have you finished your Easter decorations in your home yet? I started to decorate 2 weeks ago, here are some photos of my Easter home. The next photo is huge and you can enlarge it by clicking on it:

A close up from the things on the mantle:

Sweet LV, our tomcat, is quite confused what the black iron bunny thing is doing on his window sill space lol

Now we go upstairs into my studio, this is just a pretty vignette sitting on one of my desks:

And I finally soldered a 3D reliquary, which I like doing so much that I can promise much more of these Reliquaries to come this year:

I also soldered a few Easter pendants, like this one, with a Dresden bunny sandwiched between the glasses:

Here are some more of my latest solder works. The bunny pendant is sold to dear Kathy in the US and the Girl with the dove pendant to the lovely Katja Fliegenpilz in Lübeck:

Another thing I always wanted to solder are houses. This one is my frist try:

And I also did some spring inspired bird pendants:

The beautiful Ledger paper which I used for most of my photos backgrounds are a purchase from a very nice Texas gal called Jamie, the sweet baby cabinet card is also from her etsy shop called"shoparteology" I found her through sweet Lori from http://myfaeriewindow.blogspot.com/ :

Lastly I like to show you a gift container made for a friends b-day. It's an embellished German paper maché cone.

This week I embellished lot's of German paper maché Easter eggs that I will show you in my next post, or if you are curious you can alread have a look at my flickr photostream that you can always find in my sidebar http://www.flickr.com/photos/98632037@N00/

I also have lot's of my spring garden photos to share in my next post so stay tuned!

Until then I wish you all a fabulous spring time and hope to be back soon!

xoxo Carola

Quick project, V-day swaps and heart love

2009-02-22T13:28:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear readers and blogging friends!
I know it's been awhile again since my last post but I've been busy partying (my b-day was end of January), caring for our new housmate Elvis, creating and swapping etc. as you will see in the following photos:

While the weather is still wintery outside and the garden is sleeping (see picture below) I used my spare time to finish my V-day swaps and to create new soldered jewelry and other things. Today I made the pink ribbon and yoyo wreath in the photo above. It was a quick and fun project. I had this straw wreath laying around and suddenly felt the need to use it, so I cutted pink florist crepe paper in stripes and wrapped it around the wreath, then I used all kind of ribbon and lace that I had laying around my desk from other projects and tacked them on the wreath with small pins. It looked beautiful, like a ribbon and lace sample wreath, but not finished so I used some yoyos I got from Anita and Cerri and tacked them on with pins as well as some buttons, pper flowes etc.. You can click on the photo above to enlarge it and see all the details. I'm quite happy with the way it turned out.

Did I ever show you a picture of our new tomcat Elvis? We got him right after Christmas (our old cat Sammy unfortunately died a few weeks before) when he was exactly 6 month old and we call him LV and he's a real cutie but he needs a lot of my spare time as well. He's not yet allowed to go out alone, but soon he will discover the garden with me and I think he's already dreaming of all his future adventures:

I also like to show to you some swap parcels I received in the last weeks.

I had a private friendship parcel exchange with my sweet friend Madai from Wren Cottage in South Carolina. She pampered me with all kinds of silver glass glittered goodies like one of her wonderful garlands saying Happy Easter, a star garland, a beautiful glitter heart and a gorgeous glitter cone, because she knows just how much I love them as well as her hand made button garland and all of the other lovingly chosen goodies like the enchanting little lamb. Thanks again dearest Madai! xoxo

I had to pick up her parcel from the German custom office and had to open it there (they thought they could charge me taxes for it). My mum came there with me and we ooohhhed and aaaahhed while I unpacked the treasures from my dear far away friend. My mum instantly fell in love with the sweet little lamb too!

I put it under one of my glass cloches where it always says SPRING to me now!

Another wonderful swap I got came from Ellen from the Netherlands. We were partners in the "All that we love" Valentine swap of the "Year of colour" group from Artsy Mama.

When I opened the beautiful turquoise ornament bag I found all these delightful parcels (click picures to enlarge) above and unpacked it looked like this: Wow!

Ellen spoiled me with two of her handmade journals, aren't they pretty? I love how she made them look like Vintage treasures:

And she also made one of her sweet felt birdies for me, which of course is an instand fave of mine :)

I was further very lucky to get some flea market finds from Ellen as you can see in the next two photos. I especially love the wooden silk spools which are so hard to find today:

Thank you so much dear Ellen I really love it all!

Well lastly I like to show you my latest soldered jewelry. A good friend of our family was so nice and cutted a couple of heart shaped glasses for me and I had so much fun to decorate and solder them, they are all two sided.

I guess I'm going to sell most of them, but I'm I'm not yet sure where and when.

So that's it for today, I don't want to make this post too long.

Hope you liked what I shared with you and I'm always happy if you leave me a comment!

Love Carola xoxo

Vintage Valentine Tinsel Hearts

2009-01-18T08:09:00.000-08:00

Click on the picture above to enlarge it, it's huge!

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottages and my first post in the new year dear blogging friends and readers! I hope you all had a great time over the holidays and are already back in full swing in 2009. I had a little problem getting back in swing with a cold I catched and then very much work in the office during the first week after the holidays, but now I have adjusted again and I'm full of creative energy which I could finally use in my studio again, making Vintage Valentine Tinsel Heart wall hangings this weekend:

For the 3 Tinsel hearts that I decorated on my mantle I used Vintage materials like orginal old German sheet music paper and old cabinet photo cards from the flea market and herited Vintage lace, as well as some Dresden foil papers and Boullion from my stash and also other supplies that I bought or swapped from/with flickr friends like Jennifer Jinette, Cerri of the Little Pink Studio, Andrea of Onehundred Wishes, Heather of Speckled Eggs and Sarah of My so called junky life.

I'm pretty pleased with the way they turned out, they have got the nostalgic look that I was hoping for. See the tiny brass amor dangling from this heart?

I also made a few pink hearts. I find these two turtle doves from Cerri, that I've pasted on a Valentine paper banner that I made myself just so sweet!

For the Valentine heart above and the Valentine heart box below and also for the Valentine heart in the last photo of this post I also used the beautiful fabric yoyos I got send from my friend Anita last year:

For the box cover I've put the yoyo on a pink vintage milliney flower:

If you are interested in one of my hearts you are welcome to send me an e-mail to the e-mail addy you'll find in my profile under contact and I'll send you the infos you'll need to decide if you want to purchase one.

Have a very good start in a hopefully creative and happy new year 2009 everyone!

XOXO

Carola

Oh Tannenbaum

2008-12-23T17:23:00.001-08:00

The tree is finally up and sparkling! One day before Santa comes he he :)

This year I put some of my soldered Christmas ornaments on the tree and really like the nostalgic look of it!

View through my Advent chandelier (as always you can enlarge all the photos if you'd like to see more details by simply clicking on them):

There is never enough sparkle at Christmas, wouldn't you agree?

Some more close ups of my my newly soldered nostalgic Christmas ornaments:

A dear friend has made me the fabric skate boot in the background 2 years ago:

There is mixture of new but nostalgic, old-Vintage and self made ornaments on my tree, but I used only my silver ornaments, no red ones this year:

The reflector baubles are very old and belong to my faves for many years now:

I was so lucky to find 8 more oval shaped huge glasses which are old stock and very rare to find over here and I used them to make 4 new nostalgic ornaments for my tree, like this one:

The sweet Tilda bird in the next photo is a Christmas present from my dear friend Anita, she actually made me 5 new birds which came in a very pretty rose box, I really love the snow flakes fabric, so sweet!

Anita has also made me this gorgeous fabric Toile de Jouy heart which I decorated on my antique armoire along with a beautiful quilted heart she made for me last year. She knows how much I love Toile de Jouy and when she asked me about the size, shape etc. I would like the heart in, I asked her if she could sew beads around the heart the way I saw it on the pretty fabric hearts from Julie Collings and the sweet heart she is she fullfilled my wish and I just love it! I got even more presents from her, enchanting fabric tags, more sweet hearts, an awesome inspiration board with toile too and a wonderful fabric bunting rose garland, but I'll have post these treasures in another post.

I leave you with another view of the whole tree in all its candle light glory (click to enlarge) and once again I like to wish y'all a very merry and peaceful Christmas surrounded by your loved ones!

Hugs Carola xox

Pretty little Christmas blog party - better late than never!

2008-12-15T13:12:00.000-08:00

Can I still join the party? I know I'm late to Heather Pretty petals Pretty little Christmas blog party today but I was sick all weekend, had to work today and then had to light lots of candles when I came home from the office and take some new photos for the party, load them up etc. and well here I am. I just saw that some sweet party people have already posted to my last post from 2 weeks ago, thinking it was the party post, but I don't want to cheat you, so here are some new photos of Christmas decorations at Boxwood Cottage this season. The first two photos are taken in my studio

but the real cosy Christmas is happening down in my living room:

Please click on my photos to enlarge and see all the details. As most of you will know in Germany we usually don't have our tree up before the 24th of December, which is when Santa comes to bring our presents, in the evening of the 24th, not in the morning of the 25th like it is in the USA for example. And we use to have a real fir tree, no artificial ones. We went in the woods (to a tree farmer) to choose our tree a month ago, and we'll go and get it next week, so I can't show it to you at this date. Instead of it I can show you some other decorations like my all time favorite white bird cage for example. See the cute tiny stocking hanging on the cage? It's an ornament from my friend Cari Kraft and talented Cari although made some of the ornaments on my mantle (photo above).

The most important thing for a pretty little Christmas for me is candle light so I have candles and tea lights lit everywhere at the Cottage as soon as it is dark enough.

This is the place where I love to sit, have my Latte macchiato, feel cosy and read my Vampire novel when I come home from the office. I've just finished the 3rd book of the Twilight series and hope Santa will bring the forth - in English pretty please dear Santa, cause I can't stand read it in my mother tongue German, I tried but didn't like it!

Unfortunately it was to dark today to take photos of my deck and garden which is also decorated and I have feeders for my sweet feathered friends everywhere and when I look tkrough the dark window in the background of the next photo during the day I can observe them picking peanuts, cranberries, sunflower seeds etc. That is so much fun for me and I really enjoy this, it adds a lot to my pretty little Christmas feeling.

Candles make all glass things shine, so glass items like in these photos belong to my fave Christmas decorations:

Anja if you read this you will recognise that I've copied your fab idea and used my vintage enamel Guglehupf cake mold for an Advent wreath. It's just not safe to light the candles because I don't want the fir tree branches to burn lol, but I think it looks very Christmassy and it smells good too :)

I also love to decorate with red fruits like the Pomegranate for Christmas. In this bowl is one real and one glass Pomegrante. Oh and I was very lucky to find two star shape glasses, so of course I had to solder them into a silver Christmas star ornament with a cute vintage picture right away. I so wish I had the skills to cut glass in such beautiful shapes.

Merry Christmas to all my dear blogging friends and readers around the world and I hope that you will all have a joyful and peaceful celebration! I hope to get around to do another post before Christmas, but you never know, the time passes always fast, but even faster at around Christmas, at least so it seems to me.

It's already quite late, so I don't think I'll be able to visit all the party participants tonight, but I promise that I'll keep visiting all week.

Hugs Carola xox

1st of Advent, first snow & studio news

2008-11-30T23:02:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends, readers and viewers! I'm so sorry for the long absence again, I always have so much to blog about but so little time. Yesterday was the first of Advent, only 24 days left until Christmas and I took a few photos of my festive decorations for you.

I created 3 small x-mas stockings from another template out of Julie Collings book "Pretty little felts". They are made from felt of course and lace etc. and then my dear cousin Stefanie sewed them together for me, because I have no sewing machine. I'm quite happy with the way they tuned out and decorated them on my faux fire place/mantle, you can always enlarge my photos bei clicking on them to see more details.

This year I found 2 of the gorgeous cone candles and put them in my silver vases on the mantle.

Then I decorated one of my chandeliers with silver stars, diamond pendants and glitter snowflakes as well as a new pretty silver cone. I tried to get a good picture of it with the candles glowing and no flash, but they came out a bit blurry:

Here's a sneek peak of a parcel I send out to Cerri of the Little pink studio last Friday, hopefully she'll get it soon because I put all my favorite German Living and Crafts magazines, the Christmas issues in it:

Last Sunday (November 30) we had our annual Winter magic market at my friends cottage at the country side and my Dad was so kind to build me a Christmas tree from a broomstick. I used it to present all my pendants and ornaments and it is very useful in my studio too now to organise my pendants. Thank you very much again Dad! :)

This is what my little booth looked like. The horse stables at my friends cottage are such a beautiful surrounding for our Winter magic market.

In the next photo you see a close up of one of my new Winter/Christmas pendants/ornaments. Got the sweet wintery sleigh girls picture from a scanned old postcard from my friend Anita. I think the mica flakes really give the pendant the look of snow:

On November 22nd we woke up to a real Winter wonder land here in Bremen and I started taking pictures right away, it was still a bit dark outside, but everything looked so magical in my garden and I so like that you can even see the snow softly falling down in the pictures (click to enlarge the photos!):

Here's what my front garden looked like covered in soft new snow:

Of course when it's cold outside it has to be warm and cosy inside so I lit my red glowing candle glasses. The paper/cardboard cake stand in the photo below is one of my latest creations. I used 45 year old paper lace and silver Dresdens borders to embellish it:

Next is a photo of my latest Vintage Wallpaper Wallbox, this time I chose other colors than usual. It was custom made for someone in the US with the intials M S, but she couldn't afford it in the end, because of the high mailing costs to the US and other reasons, so it's still in my studio and I think I'll have to put the letters M S off:

Talking about my studio here is a mid November picture of one of my fave corners in the studio, although it's constantly changing, meanwhile it looks much more festive:

At the beginning of November I told my mum about an old paper cutter I had seen in the latest German Country Living magazine issue and showed her the photo and told her that I would like to find one like this fpr my studio too and then she said to me "wait a moment, I think I have what you search", went down in the basement and came back up with this beautiful old paper cutter. Score!!! She was so clever to save it from the bulk garbage of her neighbors a few years ago, which was my luck now :)) Thank you mum!

I decorated it with pretty vintage ribbon on wooden spools, my new twine holder and an antique Santa ornament:

Another peek in my studio. The small glass container is filled with pretty Yoyos I got send from my dear friend Anita of My Country Cottage Garden http://ein-stueck-garten.blogspot.com/ last month:

And lastly I leave you with a photo of some very pretty Christmas craft supplies I recently purchased from Brandy over at the Brandyvine boutique:

Have a great time at the run up for Christmas everyone!

Hugs Carola xox

Marie Antoinette Birthday Soireé

2008-11-02T05:36:00.000-08:00

Welcome to todays Marie Antoinette's birthday soireé dear readers!
Joy of Cupid Charm http://cupidscharm.blogspot.com/ has invited me and many other creative blogging friends from all over the world to contribute to Marie Antoinette's birthday party on her blog today so I created some new Marie Antoinette ornaments especially for this event:

I made Marie Antoinette soldered jewelry pendants in all shapes and sizes before and also a Marie Antoinette art paper doll, but for her party today I found it important to invent something new. You may remember the shape of these ornaments from my last post where I showed you a Christmas Ornament in the same shape (the template for the shape is out of Julie Collings book Pretty little felts). I think this shape also fits to the former Queen of France because it has a barock and royal feeling to me:

Please enlarge the photos by clicking on them to see all the details. The blue flocked one below is my fave of these wallpaper ornaments. Do you have a fave one too?

I further used the glass caps/protectors which I already made the turquoise L ornament in my last post from to make two more pink MA ornaments. They are both two sided and I tried my best to make them pretty from all sides which the famous french Queen deserves, because she loved all things pretty in pastel colors, gold and silver.

This actually is the back side on one of the pendants:

And here you see it from the front (click to enlarge):

This is the front of the other one. Cheers Marie!

And this is the back:

They turn around all the time when hanging and it was fun to take pictures from all angels:

I really like the look of them hanging from the chandelier in my living room:

I hope you liked my contributions to the party and will check out the blogs and creations of Cupid Charm where you can also find the links to all the other party participants!

Have a fantastic start into November my friends!

Hugs Carola xox

New creations in felt, paper/cardboard and solder!

2008-10-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

click on photo to enlarge it in full size

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blog friends and readers!
I have some sparkling new creations to share with you today.

I'm still making these paper weights with moving parts inside, in the photo above I took a picture of them on my new pressed glass cake stand with pretty scalloped edging. The one in the picture below is custom made for my private swap with Sylvie of Babaprincesse.

The backside is covered with flocked wallpaper to safe the table from scratches.

Then next you'll see my work on the left and the beautiful shadow box on the right is the lovely work from my flickr friend Colleen Baptista. She sent it to me with directions on how to make these shadow boxes, so I that can make some too. Thanks again dear Colleen for your generosity and for sharing the "How to do's" with me!

This week was my goddaughters 18th birthday and I thought you'd might like to see what I made for her:

I had fun making her the scrabble tile Happy Birthday piece above spelling her full name and also the soldered pendant in the next photo:

She called me today to tell me how much she loves her new necklace and that all her friends finds it very stylish :)

I also made her this turquoise pendant for her room window with her initial letter inside. It sparkels wonderful in the ligth when it hangs in a window and moves a bit.

I recycled a paper glass protector cap (which I saved in a hotel on my latest journey to Greece ) for it and embellished it to my hearts content:

Think I'll create more of these ornaments because I can imagine them being very pretty Christmas ornaments as well. Speaking about ornaments leads me to the first photo in this post and to my latest etsy purchase the book "Pretty little felts" from Julie Collings. It's my new fave book after "Pretty little things" from Sally Jean and after my addiction to soldering jewelry I feel a new addiction to felt crafts coming up! Julie has a gorgeous style, really one of a kind and inspired me very much. See the ornament in the left lower corner of this photo? The template for it is in the book and I used it to make the ornament on top of this post. Julie also signed her book for me personally and sent me some of her pretty supplies which I simply love!

As always all my photos are clickable to enlarge them to see all the details!
The first project from Julie's beautiful book that I realised was the vintage felt fairy girl in the next picture:

And Julie also inspired me to start wool felting and making this little fellow after my own design.

May I introduce you to Mr. Frosty?

Another person who inspired me to create him is Crystal Hanehan from Vintage by Crystal. I simply adore all her whimsical spun cotton and cotton batting creations!

I'd be thrilled if you'd leave me some comments on what you thinik of my latest creations and tell me what are you working on at the moment?

Now I have to leave you again and keep creating, it's a pity that the weekend is almost over and I have to hurry up to finish some more creations.

See you again soon I guess!

Hugs Carola xox

In the mood for crafts & swaps with template and challenge for you!

2008-10-18T02:17:00.000-07:00

Hello my dear readers,

today I have to admit that I already got into the mood for Christmas swaps and crafts. How about you? Do you think that I start to early? Well seeing that we skip Halloween and Thanksgiving here in Germany Christmas is the next upcoming holiday here an it's only 9 weeks away, which is not far when you like to craft a lot for it.
I made these skates in January 2006 and also posted them here on my blog at the time:

Now on Thursday I bought a German Magazine called Living & More and found almost the same paper skates in it, see my following scan (should enlarge when you click on it):

Well I think it's kind of spooky how much they resemble the skates I made 2 years ago, even in the color/pattern mix. Can it be that they saw my skates and got inspired? Anyway I felt challenged to create a new pair using the template they provided:

But this time I used totally different materials like Vintage sheet music, a silhouette picture from my daughter when she was still 3 years old, pompom fringes, German Dresden foil borders, velvet flowers from Cerri, rhinestone jewelry from the flea market, bonjour satin boarder from Andrea, a fabric yoyo from Anita, a pink metall bell, ricrac boarder and so on.

I like better that I made them two sided this time so that they can hang from a branch or a bird cage in my case and look good from both sides:

They came out totally different I think but pretty nonetheless, or what do you think?

I had so much fun embellishing them:

Now I'd like to challenge you to make your own pair of skates too! If you'd like to play along, here is the template from the magazine. Please show them on your blog with a link to this post and let me know under this post when you have finished a pair, can't wait to see your ideas!

I also did a well kind of Christmas swap already with my flickr friend Sylvie from Babaprincesse and she spoiled me with 3 fabulous fabric Christmas stockings from her own design which I love (cklick on the photos to enlarge them and see more details):

She also made me a mini fabric bunting garland, so sweet:

Thank you dear Sylvie it was a pleasure to swap with you again!

What else did I craft in the last two weeks? Well my daughter once bought a box of simple cardboard drawers from IKEA for 3 Euros, they were blue, so I painted them white inside and out before altering them with wallpapers and tea stained "Toile de Jouy" papers that I got send in our last swap from my sweet friend Madai over at Wren Cottage. I also used some silver German Dresden foil boarders:

Of course I'll use them for storage in my studio.

Further I finished some soldered jewelry pendants. For the next one I had to use the scan of my daughters silhouette again, inspired by Andreas new Logo of Onehundred wishes. A silhouette artist from our Medieval Christmas market in Bremen created this silhouette from Roxanne when she was almost 4 years old:

The next two sided belveded glass pendant has a Dresden silver foil bird on one side:

and the Eiffel tower on the other side (Eiffel tower sticker is from a swap with my dutch friend LiLi M) I just doodled a bit around the sticker:

This one is for the swap with Sylvie, the little girl is a scan from a vintage photo card I bought from our Bremen flea market last year:

And I also finished off some pendants from a collage I created some weeks ago:

"Good things happen when you go for it" is a saying I used in one of the pendants and I'll try to make this my new motto!

I guess that's all for now, or no wait, there is one more thing! If there is anyone out there in the US/Canadian blogland who'd be interested in a special private swap with me, that would be fab! I have to give the latest issue of a German Crafts and Living magazine, as well as a German Country Living magazine and one of my soldered pendants of your choice and would wish so much for the new Somerset publication of "Where women create" which I read, should be on your newsstands on November 1st. If you are interested please let me know here or email me.

Have a great Sunday and new week evereyone!

Hugs xox Carola

A winner, fall deco and Athens

2008-10-05T06:09:00.000-07:00

Hello dear friends and readers, I'm back from Athens since a week today but haven't found time for a new post yet. I catched a cold while coming home to Hamburg airport from the pleasingly warm Greek weather to a wet and windy very autumnal German weather in thin summer clothes and naked feet in sandals *Duh me*

Thank you for all your sweet comments on my 3 years blogiversary post! The overall favorite photo was the Venezian balcony, followed by the close up of the Doge's palace and the Venezian pink lanters/silhouette photo. I think that's perfect because those are my faves too! :) And without further ado I announce the winner now, chosen by a random number generator (P.S.: sorry dear Daisy and Tyra, but you were a bit too late, I closed comments at No. 56 this morning), congratulations to you Miss Mary:

Before I'll show you some photos of Athens, I thought you might be interested to see some photos of my current fall decoration. I like the cosy evenings inside while outside it's wet and windy, with candles lit giving my home a warm shine.

The photo above (click to enlarge) I shot just a few days ago, when I took out the plane tree balls which I picked of a plane tree ( European plane Platanus x hispanica Muenchh., you 'll find a close up pic of one here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:London_plane_flower.jpg ) in Athens and decorated them over my bird cage and around the white pumpkin. They are dry and quite hard and last for many years. I love using them for decorations, but they are ususally hanging far to high to reach them, so in Athens I had the luck to find a tree where they hung deep enough and I had my huge collegues help me pulling them down for me.

The pictures above I think reflects this cosy time of the year so well. I put dry artichocke heads in the two silver cups on my mantle and lit the tea lights in the glasses. I'd advice you to click on the pictures above and below to enlarge them and see all the details.

Anita's fabric birds are still hanging from the chandelier (and yes her lavender hearts on the mantle too lol) and birds are also everywhere in my decoration between the pumpkins. For me birds are always seasonable:

So the next photo is not from my home, but from a greek home in the old Plaka of Athens and doesn't it look very cosy too? And so classical!

I also like the old licor shop "Brettos" in the Plaka (= old city) of Athens where you can taste all the yummy stuff:

and the beautiful neo classical houses with the gorgeous scrolly iron balcony balustrades:

Oh and the beautiful statues like this one of the greek goddess Athena:

And I was so impressed by the old olive tree on the Acropolis next to the Erechteion Temple, of which a Myth says that it was planted by the goddess Athena (click photo to enlarge it):

Here is the story:

Athena and her uncle, the sea god Poseidon, competed for the affections of the Greeks, each providing one gift to the nation. Poseidon provided either a wonderful horse or a salt-water spring, but Athena provided the olive tree, giving shade, oil, and olives. The Greeks preferred her gift and named the city after her.

Well I have had a fabulous 4 days in Greece and a lot of more photos, but I'm not sure if you are interested in seeing them so I finish here, for today at least.

Enjoy the cosy autumn days!

Carola xox

3 years blogiversary & Italian paper give away

2008-09-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers! I'm back from Italy since a few days and before I'm off again to see my cousin and my sister at the countryside this weekend and then off again to Athen in Greece next week for a couple of days, I'd like to celebrate with you my 3 years blogiversary. I started my blog in September 2005 although it feels much longer than that. My first posts even were in German language, but I quickly realised that I'll reach much more interesting people by blogging in English. I have met so many fantastic and creative women from all over the world on this journey for which I'm more than thankful! I feel so connected to you through my blog and since a year to my flickr too that I wont want to miss this anymore!

Well I'm a bit in a hurry today so I better stop chatting and go on with this post. I felt like sharing with you some inspirational pictures from my new fave Italian city which with no doubt is Venice now. Above you see some lil treasures I brought home from my Italy journey. My fave place to shop was a Paper shop called Il Papiro in Venice and I thought to celebrate my 3 years blogiversary I'll also share some papers from Il Papiro and other lil Italian treasures with you:

To win my blogiversary Italian paper give away in the photo above you simply have to leave a comment under this post and let me know which of the Venice photos I'll show you now you like best:

The basilica of San Marco with the Lion of San Marco as it's symbol looks like it comes straight out of a fairy tale to me:

I was also stunned by the beautiful details of the Venician palazzos. This is a close up of the Doge's palace. See the the shades the sun sent through the pattern?

The next palazzo is called Ca' d'oro and it looks like precious lace to me:

The lion of San Marco again:

A shop window with very artistic masks:

Loved the silhouettes the Venezian lanterns made and the pink glass:

Isn't this a gorgeous balcony, just look at these fairy tale like windows:

The huge chimneys you can see on these houses you already find in medieval paintings:

Oh to own such a beautiful rose garden at a canale in Venezia must be a dream:

As always you just have to doubleclick on my photos to enlarge them and see all the details, the photo above for example is huge!

I didn't do a Gondola cruise, it's too expensive, 100 Euros for 15 minutes yikes, we used the Vaporetto instead which is the waterbus in Venice and drives all along the Canale Grande so that you have lot's of time to enjoy the sights along:

In the picture above you see the water street were we had our beautiful B & B appartement and below is the famous Rialto Bridge, photo taken from the Vaporetto:

Well that's all for today my friends, I'll have to hurry up now because my cousin Stefanie is waiting for me with breakfast and it's an hour drive to go to her.

I'll pull the winner out of my Vintage chapeau clac when I'm back from Greece next weekend.

Until then have a fabulous start into the cooler Autumn season!

Hugs xox

Carola

Goodbye Summer garden, a prize, paper & collaged pendants

2008-08-31T06:03:00.000-07:00

Hello dear bloging friends and readers, before I'm off to my vacation in Italy :) I'd like to say good bye to my summer garden and share with you some new creations and a fab prize that I won!

The picture above I forgot to show you in my last post. I attended a paper making class at my sisters art studio at the beginning of August and this is the result. 9 different sheets of selfmade paper. It was so much fun to exercise with the paper pulp. My cousin Stefanie was there with me as well and we both decided that we have to do it again very soon!

Last weekend I played with water colors, chalk, ink, acrylic paints, stamps and all sorts of papers and embellishments and out came the collage above (it's just a part of the collage, which is to big to scan in one part). Then I scanned it in parts and printed it out and embellished it more and scanned it again and then printed it out again in different sizes and then cutted it in shapes for my pendant glasses and the outcome was a new line of collaged pendants

which is still in the works. I didn't really know how much fun it is to actually use a self made collage for my pendants instead of using found papers and just do some cut outs and pastings. This felt so much more like real art and was very satisfying. I haven't got around to solder them yet with all the preparations for our vacation, but I'll do that as soon as I'm back home.

A sweet parcel arrived at my door step this week from Sandra Evertson. I was so lucky to win a prize from the 1 year blogging anniversary of her inspirational art blog http://sandraevertson.blogspot.com/. It's the cute little porcelain doll head in the photo below. He was all bold and I just had to embellish him a bit for his first photo shoot so I made him a party hat and gave him a paper lace collar and stuck him on a round cloth pin and put him in an embellished glass bottle. He came in that cute little box with a darling Edwardian lady card.

Thank you very much Sandra for sending him over the big ocean to Boxwood Cottage where he is appreciated a lot!

Click on the photo to enlarge it!

Now it's time for me to say good bye to my summer garden. I guess when I'm back home in two weeks time nothing will look the same.

These pictures are from the shady part of my back yard under my trees and between the hedges. This is the best place to spend hot summer days at, because of the shade the trees provide.

These Hydrangeas, Nicotianas and Lobelias are growing in a pot on my hot patio/deck.

The Monardas and some Alchemillas are growing again after beeing cut back before.

The bumblebees are always enjoing my Verbena bonariensis, which has meanwhile selfseeded everywhere in my garden, after I first planted it two years ago.

Eden rose 85 aka Pierre de Ronsard is providing me with new buds all summer long and is still blooming beautifully:

On my deck I always have a parasol open because otherwise some flowers would dry out and die in no time:

Well now it's really time to say good bye and good night! Don't forget that you can enlarge all my photos to see more details. I hope to see y'all again mid September when I return from my journey to Venice, Tuscany and Rome.

Until then I wish you a wonderful late summer time!

Carola xox

P.S.:

A word to my nice blogging friends giving me blog awards again lately. I appreciate it a lot. I just don't like to post them on my blog. Same with the tag games, it all takes so much time, that I prefer to spend in a creative way, at least as long as I still have my full time office job. I hope you understand and don't feel ignored. It's so sweet that you think of me and it makes me very happy that you like my lil blog!

Wallpaper creations, new pendants, new supplies and some garden photos

2008-08-20T04:50:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to the home, garden and studio of Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers! Today I can share with you some new crafts, amazing parcels that I got in the mail with new supplies and treasures and some new garden photos at the end of this post.

After I had so much fun creating my "Vintage wallpaper wallboxes" from empty cereal boxes like the one in the first picture of this post, I thought about something that I can do with my empty "Café Latte" card board boxes and so the idea of a "Vintage wallpaper desk box" was born. I embellished the ugly cardboard box from all possible sides and now it sits on my desk holding scissors and brushes, as you can see in the photos above and below. I had fun using some of my new supplies for this little project, of which I can show you more photos later in this post.

Click pictures to enlarge and see all the details!

I also worked on some new soldered pendants this month:

I made a whole collection of Toile de Jouy and Marie Antoinette inspired pendants, of which you can see more pictures on my flickr page.

Lately I love using German scraps with glass glitter for my pendants too, like on this sweet Victorian girl:

The double Marie Antoinette pendant in the next two pictures was a custom made order for Dorthe from Denmark:

I also had some beautiful parcels in the mail in the last two weeks, one of these parcels came from my sweet friend Madai over at Wren Cottage and was jam-packed with the most wonderful goodies :D

Madai spoilt me with lot's of lovely papers, scraps and stickers and divine smelling tea dyed papers as well as a gorgeous vintage rose tin box and other lovely bits and bobs.

I love it all so much!

She also was so kind to make me a silver glitter "Boxwood Cottage" garland which I think came out simply fabulous and that I hung on my mantle, doesn't it look fab there? Madai is currently working on new glitter garlands to stock up her enchanting etsy shop Wren Cottage!

As always please click pictures to enlarge and see more details! Btw, the 3 beautiful soft colored and with french lavender filled hearts that are also hanging on my mantle piece are all handmade by my friend Anita over at My Country Cottage Garden and she just has a wonderful new collection of summer hearts for sale on her blog and I know for a fact that she is already working on more gorgeous rose hearts so if you like them too, head over and see if you can get one here: http://ein-stueck-garten.blogspot.com/!

Above you'll see a postcard of Madai's enchanting table setting at Wren Cottage which I put in a vintage wire frog that Madai also sent me, knowing that I was looking for them out here for month and not finding any. Thank's again for all the treasures you sent me and especially for your friendship dear Madai! :) xox

In the picture above I show you my new sweet Vintage Baby doll head that I ordered from Cerri Campbell's gorgeous Little pink studio shop along with all the lovely velvet posies and soft pink lace borders. Cerri is always stocking up on new and vintage treasures to decorate your home and studio or to craft and make art with, so I can only suggest you to have a look in her shop if you haven't been there yet http://www.thelittlepinkstudio.com/ ! Your baby is having a good home here dear Cerri don't worry!

I have already used some velvet posies and pink lace on my "Vintage wallpaper desk box" that I showed you at the beginning of this post as well as pieces of the beautiful Vintage wallpaper in the next photo, that I got send from dear Donna Layton over at Under the red roof blog last friday. I so love the collection of papers you chose for me Donna, thanks a million!!! You can get your own Vintage wallpaper packs in Donna's etsy shop in case you don't know. Donna owns an amazing collection of the most gorgeous Vintage wallpapers and I'm so very happy that I also got sheets of the flocked wallpaper now for the first time! :))

And lastly I like to share some August garden pictures with all the garden lovers among you.

This wonderful scenting rose is blooming for the first time this season. It's David Austin's St. Cecilia:

I also love the look and scent of Phlox in my summer garden:

My sweet multi colored "Augusta Luise" is having her second flush of blooms now:

and on my patio I have the English rose Wrenlock rose blooming along with Zinnias and Cosmos in matching shades of pink and not so matching a soft yellow Hollyhock in the background growing directly in front of my living room window:

One of my faves at the moment is this delicate and feathery Thalictrum sin. delavii below:

Thank you very much dear readers for staying with me until the end of this long post that you hopefully enjoyed.

Best wishes for some more happy summer days sends you

Carola xox

About Miss Rose Potter, Marie Antoinette and my sweet grandma

2008-07-31T22:52:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers and to a no garden photo post for a change although I have tons of July pictures from the garden still to share with you but this month flew by far too fast.

Today is Miss Tiffany's "Show me your form" day! She has got herself a new old/vintage dress form a few weeks ago for a bargain price, which she has called Nadia and her hubby called her a "scary thing" and so she asked her blog friends to help her show her hubby that she's not the only crazy one loving old dress forms by posting pictures of our dress forms.

I feel so very lucky to own an antique dress form, which I got as a gift from a very dear friend in December 2006, you can read my story and see my photos about that here http://carolsgarden.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html in my second post from May 2006.

These antique dress forms are very hard to get hold of nowadays and if you find one you often can hardly afford her which makes my Rose even more special to me. My daughter calls her Miss Potter, I call her Rose, so I named her Rose Potter!

In the picture above you see a close up of her beautiful neck. Thing is she has had no neck at all when I got her, so I asked my dad to make me one and I think he did a very good job!

I love to move Rose around in my studio and to redecorate her every now and then.

For this photo shoot she has got my vintage chapeau clac that I got from my mum as well as a beautiful vintage blouse with lace that I got from another dear friend - gell Al ;-)

The rose wreath I have had for ages already, it was hanging in a window, but suddenly it occured to me that it would look great on Rose's breast, what do you think?

The beautiful milliney roses are a purchase from Holly over at Holly Doodle Designs.

Tiffany sent us an e- mail that she has 50 participants in her Show and Tell today, so I suggest that when you have finished my post you'll head over to her's here: http://shabbyscraps.typepad.com/shabbyscraps/

where you'll find a list of all participants and so to see all the other beautiful and oh so inspiring photos of bloglands dress forms.

And now to change the subject I'd like to show you a little project which I was inspired to do by my friend Sandy over at ArtTeaLife Blog. She and her "Royal Confections" buddies had the idea to do a round robin in which they alter the Vintage styrofoam body form that you see in the next picture and which you can get from Cerri's Little Pink Studio.

I found Sandy's idea so fascinating that I had to order me a styrofoam body form from Cerri and start altering her and here is what came out of it. This is my first try (double click picture to enlarge and see all the details) :

It's Marie Antoinette in case you didn't guess ;-)) She was so fun to create! The fab thing is you don't have to sew or glue to dress her up. I just pinned everything on her with my hat pins. Even her hat is made with a hat pin (you can get these gorgeous hat pins at Cerri's shop too and also at Andrea's Onehundredwishes and others). I used a vintage wallpaper border from my friend Nicole of Small Treasures, a fabric yoyo for the hat from my friend Anita of MyCountryCottageGarden, a millinery flowerm,some borders, pink Dresdens, lace etc..

Here is a close up of her dress:

And to finish today's "creative post" here is a picture of my last Vintage Wallpaper Wallbox.

It's made from a Kellogs Smacks cardboard box this time and the sweet children in the picture are my grandmother Elfriede and her lil brother. If you haven't seen my first one have a look here: http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/1647/wallpaperbox3wo6.jpg The fabric border below the old picture says "Vergißmeinnicht" which means "Forget me not" in English and I feel that when I use her photo in my art she'll surely never be forgotten about at least not as long as I live.

That's all from me for today folks, I'm off now to look at all the other "Show me your form" posts which will take some time I think, so if you do so too, you'd better make yourself comfortable ;-))

Happy summer days!

Carola xox

P.S. All pictures in my posts should enlarge to see more details when you click on them and then click again on the orange button in the lower right corner of the photo.

Sweet summer days and I have two "one to one" swap offers!

2008-07-06T14:16:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage in July dear blogging friends and readers!

At first I'd just like to show you a few impressions from my summer garden

And then some of my latest solder works

I've swapped 3 of these pendants with lovley flickr friends and kept one for myself to wear

Here you can see me wearing my pendant:

Can you ever get enough of roses? I surely can't and I love to bring them in the house freshly picked from the garden like the Rokoko roses in my picture above. Below you see a close up of my beautiful English David Austin rose "Heritage":

And as always in summer I have to show you another picture of my beautiful Eden85/Pierre de Ronsard rose:

Another rose bouquet freshly picked on a rainy Sunday to bring the garden inside:

Here I spend a wonderful Sunday afternoon with roses and beautiful home and garden magazines dreaming up new decorations and garden corners:

Talking about beautiful magazines I have a swap to offer to two of you, I'd offer you one of these beautiful German garden-living-creative magazines

and one of these brand new round pendants:

if someone of my dear US blogging friends would be so kind to send me the latest Somerset Life magazine (July issue) in return and from another one of you I'd be so thankful for the last Somerset Life issue with the pink glass glitter bottle on the cover!

They are so hard to come by over here and you'd make me very happy if you'd swap them with me! Just leave me a comment or send me an email and I'll get back to you asap!

Also I like to thank you all very much for the lovely comments you have left on my last posts, they were such a great pleasure to read! :)

Have a beautiful new summer week everyone!

Hugs Carola xox