Marie Antoinette Birthday Soireé

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

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

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

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.