Quick project, V-day swaps and heart love

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

New creations in felt, paper/cardboard and solder!

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!

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

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!