Goodbye Summer garden, a prize, paper & collaged pendants

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!

So much to blog about!

Hey everyone welcome back to Boxwood Cottage! :)

So nice to be back, I was very busy lately and have so much to blog about, but I think you wait for the winners of my give away so I'm going to announce them first thing. We have two lucky winners, which are both quite new to my blog:

Ta da da da! The first winner I drew is *Heidi* Woodred and the second winner is Pat Winter! My cat Sammy was the witness that everthing went right btw lol Congratulations!!! Please email your addresses and tell me which of the pendants in the last 4 pictures of my last blog entry you prefer. Remember they are both two sided. One is the vintage girl/butterly one and the other one is the rose seed/garden guide one. Hope you'll not choose both the same, then I have to flip a coin.

To all the other almost 70 commenters thank you so much for playing along! I have emailed some of you for magazine swaps and I appreciate all the swap offers very much. I'll probably contact those of you who have offered me to swap magazines and which I haven't e-mailed yet next month!

Talking about give aways I was very lucky too and have won 2 give aways lately, the first two I ever won by the way! Haven't got my worry dolls from dear Nature Girl yet, but this week I've got Natalea's custom made give away and boy I so love it! Natalea has asked for my fave colors and things etc. and has then sent me all of the fabulous goodies in the pictures above and below!

I'ts all so very pretty and perfectly matching my taste and style! I feel really spoiled! Thank you so much Natalea! xox

Another parcel I've got this week was the fabulous and very inspiring new Crowns & Tiaras book, if I would have had this book before our Crown and Tiara swap, I would have probably made a totally different crown.

It features a lot of my favorite artists and my two fave crowns are the following one made by Nicol Sayre, isn't it wonderful and nostalgic looking?

And then this beaded one made by Pam Garrison, looking like a real treasure!

Oh and I've got some more parcels in the mail this week. What a lucky week! The following picture shows the content of a parcel from my finnish blogging friend Delila. I had ordered the bisque doll legs from her Etsy shop and she was so kind to also send me one of her pretty "wee paper bundles":

Here are some more bisque doll parts I've got sent by a very kind and far away friend:

Another parcel with beautiful Dresdens and pretty satin ribbons that came this week was from Andrea's awesome new web boutique Onehundred wishes, if you haven't been there yet, go have a look, she just has the sweetest things and I'm sure you'll love it:


No week without new creations, this week I made a big school cone for my nieces first day at her new school. I guess you know about the German tradition?

My sweet niece totally loves her cone and wasn't even interested about the goodies inside when I gave it to her.

Oh and before I forget to mention it, I've got one more beautiful parcel this week and it was from my Marie Antoinette swap partner Megan Pickwell from Australia (it's for the swap hosted by Delila). Here is a picture she has made, isn't it gorgeous? I can't post all of the pictures of the sweet things she has made and send to me here or my blog never ends lol so if you like to see more pictures of this swap please have a look in my flickr photos, see flickr mini pictures in my sidebar!

Then I've finished my Paper Dress Garland swap hosted by Heather from Speckled Egg today. Here is one/of five of my dresses, more can also be seen in my flickr photo file and in Heathers flickr group here

Big thanks to all my dear blogging friends I had a wonderful week of giving and sharing and I like to thank you all so much for this!

Hope you've had a good week too and will have an even better week ahead with lot's of time for creativity!

Hugs Carol(a) xox

Happy Saint Valentine's Day

to all of you dear blogging friends and readers!

Welcome to another rosy and heartfelt post for Saint Valentine's day today on February 14th 2007!


I'd like to invite you to a Valentines tea party, take a seat and make yourself comfortable, the table is set in rosy pinks for you:



And if you would like to stay also for a Valentines dinner party tonight, you are cordially invited as well:

This is a little Valentines "Hello" from my garden for you!



Last Sunday I've got this lovely antique rose book as another late b-day gift and I thought it would also make a pretty picture for Valentine's day here on my blog:



This is another rosy heart which I've finished making last week:

Talking about hearts, the paper hearts for my dear winners are both packed and ready to send out to Wales in Great Britain and to Idaho in the USA today!

I'm wishing everyone of you a most joyful day! xox

And the winners are!

Because so many of you lovely people have commented on my
"Love and Art of the Heart" Give away post
I've decided to draw two winners for my heart!

My daugther took the first name out of the box and I took the second one.

So with a Drumroll ta ta ta ta here they are:

Joanne of the blog http://acupofkindness.blogspot.com/
&
Marion of the blog
http://reflectionthroughtheseasons.blogspot.com/

And these are your prizes a paper heart for both of you (my hearts all have two sides):

For
Marion:






















For Joanne:

























Congratulations dear winners! I hope you'll enjoy your new hearts!

This drawing was a fantastic
experience for me and I had so much fun discovering many new blogs. Thank you everyone for paticipating and a big thank you again to Mrs. Arttealife Sandy for bringing this up in the first place and all the lovely bloggers of the now so called "circle of hearts" who made this to something big, beautiful and unforgettable! xox

In other news the "Lovely hearts exhibition" of "Artstream studio New Hampshire" in honor for the "Breast cancer research foundation" has opened with a Vernissage yesterday on February 10th!

You can now buy online all the "Art and Love of the Heart" of all artists that have participated and submitted over 120 pieces of art to Susan's heartfelt exhibition, among these artists you'll find some fellow bloggers like Sandy of "Art Tea Life", Cathy of "Baumcat" and Corey of "Tongue in Cheek" . You can see them all at the gallery here and buy them in Artsreams online shop here!

Now go and have a look, there are some really lovely pieces and you'd do something good buying something because half of the price is going to the very good cause! You'll find my submission on page 3, but after I saw the other artists works they really took mine to shame.

Here is what Mrs. Artstream, Susan herself wrote:

Over 100 works of art in all forms from jewelry to paintings have been placed in the shop and will be ready to ship on Feburary 12. All profits go to the cause and everything is priced at $100 or less!
Have a wonderful Valentines day and spread the love!
Susan Schwake-Larochelle

Love and Art from the heart!

Comes February I'm getting all in flower mood again! Luckily with my birthday at the end of January I've got lots of new flowers and lovely presents to lift my spirits! And even more to come next Saturday when I'm going to have a party with my best friends :D!

In the picture above are fabric roses which I've decorated in a butterfly paper bag:

This gorgeous flower bouquet was one of the birthday presents from my little sister:

All these lovely flowers in the next picture and the "Dejeuner" tray were birthday presents from my mum:

A close friend sewed and painted this delightful bird & nest cushion for me, it has a Helleborus rose painted on it as well. Thanks a lot dear G. I love it!

And I'm also in the mood for hearts in February and am currently making paper hearts almost every day. Here are a few of which I have finished last week:



And with all the "love and art from the heart" which is going on in blogland at the moment, initialised by the enjoyable Sandy of www.arttealife.blogspot.com , I'd like to join in and give away a paper heart.

So if you like to be my Valentine and get my heart then please leave a comment under this post and I'm going to draw the winner on Friday 9th of February!

If you want to see all the lovely bloggers that have joined in the "love of the heart" then please have a look at Miss ZuZu's magical blog "A view through the window" where she has kindly listed them all! xox

And oh wonder today blogger has finally decided to let me change to the new version :D!