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

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

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