Paper dresses, silver solder and nature decorations

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear readers and blogging friends! It was a long break again due to a very bad back and hurting shoulder, but since this weekend I feel better, thanks to less PC sessions and more gymnastics instead.

I still solder a lot, just love doing it (click on picture to enlarge and see more details). For example all the six big oval pendants hanging from my iron chandelier above which were a custom order for my talented blogging friend Ginny from http://twinklepinkpostit.blogspot.com/ you must go and see her wonderful Marie-Antoinette Round Robin book!

I love the sparkle of the silver pendant above made with silver gleem solder and pink shiny wings from Andrea's Onehundred Wishes web boutique. Here is wishing dear Andrea all the best for the upcoming birth of her second child!

Further I've got my dresses from Heather's Paper dress garland swap and have decorated them on my mantle. I was so lucky to get beautiful dresses from fellow bloggers like Cerri, Jessi Nagy and Nicole from Small Treasures. Doesn't they look great?

Now I like to show you some nature decoration like this hydrangea and ivy wreath, all freshly picked from my fall garden:

A good friend came to dinner and brought me this limb of tiny apples instead of flowers, they are so gorgeous and a simple nature decoration:

On my deck all the vine leaves are gone by now and once again I can see my decorations underneath:

Here is a close up of a garden still life - click this link: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2099/1794576866_e15a95ab51_o.jpg

to see a bigger version with more details of the next picture!

I'd be glad if this was a little inspiration for you. I'll show you more seasonal decorations in my next post. Have a great start into the new week everyone!

Hugs Carol(a) xox

P.S. Blogger wasn't really cooperating with me, so only one picture is clickable to enlarge, I never get why though.

Pictures from my fall garden

Once again I have to apology for the lack of postings to you dear readers and blogging friends, I hope you'll forgive me again! My sister has finally moved into her new house and needed me a lot as a babysitter for my niece and nephew in the moving process as well as a moving helper, also I had a lot of work in the office and tried to use every spare moment I could find to create. I have further had a very sad case of death in my family lately, my mums dear sister, my fave auntie died after she broke her leg and had to have 2 surgeries which was to much for her, so I also needed some time to spend with my mum and my close family and of course time to grieve for her.

I know that I owe you all a big garden update having not posted for so long, so here are my fave garden pictures of the last 4 weeks:

The red Admiral (Vanessa atlanta) seem to love my garden very much this season and I love to take pictures of him.

Above is a combination of Pelargonium with vanilla scenting Heliotrop on one of my patio iron tables which still looks and scents very well.

Some beautiful roses are still blooming like the English rose "Wenlock":

My fave plant in my fall garden is the redish "Sedum spectabile", blooming together with the purple Verbena bonariensis and a pink Chrysanthemum which is not yet blooming:

Some roses are still blooming in my little rose border too.

Like the gorgeous "Augusta Luise" See close up they look much better and scents so good:

Another favorite in my fall garden is the Snapdragon which literally glows in the sun:

Oh and not to forget my darling Eden rose 85 (also called "Pierre de Ronsard" in some countries) which blooms and blooms:

Another shot of the Sedum border:

The honey bees loves the Sedum too!

And the bumblebee enjoys some late blooms of the "Buddleja davidii" :

The Admiral is sipping sweet nectar from the "Verbena bonariensis" also called "Verbena Argentina":

I bought this enchanting Penstemon last month and hope to get it through the winter this year it has a very delicious purple color:

Lastly a picture of my sweet grape vine:

If again I should not get around to post for a longer period for whatever reason it may be and you are interested in my latest pictures and crafts you can always have a look in my flickr pictures (just click on the little flickr mosaic that you see in my side bar here to get there) because I upload pictures there quite regularly.

I have started to create for Christmas now seeing that we don't celebrate Halloween here in Germany and I think you can never start early enough.

Have a fabulous new week everyone and hopefully you can enjoy some golden fall days too!

Hugs Carol(a) xox

P.S.: I hope to find the time to visit all your beautiful and inspiring blogs in the next days and I also have some swaps to finally send off, please bear with me!

Officially foofed up!

Hello everyone and thank you for stopping at Boxwood Cottage today! Before I can do a new post about my garden I have to share with you all the lovely parcels arriving at my doorstep during the last week and some of my latest soldered pendants.



I'm now officially foofed up by the sweet and more than generous Jessi Nagy! We did a one on one magazine and craft supplies swap and she has sent me a huge parcel full of the loveliest things! Just the packaging alone is worth two pictures. I hope the click on pic to enlarge thingy will work so that you can click on the next picture to see all the beautiful parcels close up. I love the papers she chose as well as the lace bows around the parcels and her self made tags are just
divine!


I also love this gorgeous card in a rose pocket she has included with a kind message:



On top of the big mail parcel she had glued the letters saying "hi foofy girl" :)

Oh just look at all the foofy treasures which where in the beautiful wrapped parcels.

You american guys just have the cutest stuff! I'm especially chuffed by all the pretty borders and of course I absolutely love the Foof-a-life book!

And to top it all of Jessi has given the book to Teresa McFayden (the main artist of all the beautiful crafts in the book) and Becky Novacek to sign it for me! Now isn't that fabulous?

Jessi you really rock girl! Thanks a million! I hope your swap parcel will arrive at your home soon! xox

I have also got the price I won from my gorgeous friend Nature Girl's drawing:

Little worry dolls to lay under my cushion at night so that they'll take away all my worries isn't that a good thought, beautiful museum quality butterflies to decorate my studio lamp and a very sweet card filled with dried leaves of roses and a mini lavender bouquet as well as a little golden charm which is an acorn of friendship, so sweet! NG you are a true friend! Thanks a lot! xox

Another magazine swap has arrived here from the lovely Natalea again. Well last time it was her fab give away I won and this time it was a little one on one swap we did. I'm so so glad and thankful that she has sent me the Artful blogger magazine, which is all about artful blogs, featuring a lot of my blogging friends like Sandy from Art tea life and Corey from Tongue in cheek and so many more, just great! Natalea has also added some very pretty art supplies. Click on picture to enlarge and see more details:

Lastly I like to show you my latest soldered pendants in the Marie-Antoinette series, which is still one of m favorite themes :

I'm planning on putting these in my Etsy shop as soon as I get around to do it!

I was so happy when I found the big oval glass in our local craft shop!

This one is quite smaller, they always have two different sides in this case a red and a blue one:

Well I think that's it for today I'm now off to a 3 days finance workshop in Hamburg (work related), coming back home to Bremen on Saturday and look forward to hopefully read you kind comments.

Hugs to all of you dear blogging friends and readers!

Carol(a) xox

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