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

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