Easter eggs, decorations, swaps and spring garden pictures

Fröhliche Ostern, happy Easter dear blogging friends and readers!

I made these vintage inspired foil Easter egg using a papier maché egg container. At first I covered it in foil paper and then I embellished it with paper lace, fabric lace, Dresden foil paper trims, vintage millinery etc.pp to my hearts content. I embellished the inside too with 45 years old vintage paper lace and a vintage German paper scrap. This scrap with a bunny driving the egg carriage inspired me to make my own bunny egg carriage.

Here you can see how it turned out. The Dresden bunny is the proud driver and the carriage is pulled by the sweet lamb that I got from my dear friend Madai:

My mum loved Madai's sheep so much that I had to get her one too and I also made her an egg carriage with a bunny for her b-day at the end of march.

I wrapped all the presents for my mum's birthday with my favorite papers, tags and millinery and gathered them in a vintage basket to give them to her. She loved it all :)

I further created the charm bracelet in the next photo for a private Easter swap with my blogging friend Anja from Matilda's Design in Munich:

And it was a pleasure to wrap all her swap goodies in pretty pink Easter style. Of course she got

a foil egg too!

Another thing that I created lately is a little reliquary shrine with a tiny frozen Charlotte doll:

Well I think you know me good enough by now to know that I just had to embellish the back side of the reliquary pendant too. I like that like this it looks pretty even when the pendant turns around which happens quite often when it hangs from my neck.

The garden season has fully started here in Germany. Since the beginning of April it's getting warmer every day. Here is my Easter vignette on one of my garden tables on the deck:

LV our little tomcat and I are enjoying the warmer temperatures and to see how everything is getting greener and more beautiful every day. This is my littel potting area, as always you can click on all my photos to enlarge them and see all the details:

For my last birthday I got a Camelia from my mum. It's a wonderful plant with large pink filled blossoms that are in bloom now:

After a hard spring rain shower lot's of flowers fell down and I gathered them to lay a Camelia heart on a garden table:

Another fave spring flower of mine it the filled double narcissus tazetta. Doesn't she make you thing at Vanilla ice cream with passion fruit sorbet too?

Everything is growing so fast now and coming along nicely in my big rose border. Not long from now and all my beautiful Allium bulbs and roses will be in bloom again:

LV has found his favorite spot in the garden. He loves to lay in this huge terracotta pot and I call him my little pot flower when he lays in there:

The white star magnolia is also blooming in my garden at the moment, white perfection, wouldn't you agree?

Lastly I like to show you my Auricula in bloom, I'm totally in love with her!

Well my friends, thank you so much for stopping by and visiting Boxwood Cottage and if you even take the time to leave me a little comment so that I know that you have been here, I would appreciate that so much in this busy world with new beautiful blogs popping up every day.

Have a happy Easter everyone and a beautiful spring time!

I'll be busy in the garden now Oh and I have to prepare the maybasket swap!

xoxo Carola

So many things to show

Hello dear blogging friends!

I'm still alive, just very busy and the day never has enough hours for me. To make up for my long blogging absence I brought you lots of pictures that will hopefully inspire you!


This is my inspiration jar or like Janice from Paper Valise called it an inspiration terrarium .http://papiervalise.typepad.com/scissor_variations/2009/03/inspiration-terrarium.html It works like this, you grab a glass container and sit down at your work space. There you just grab all kind of things you find around you in your arms reach and put them in the glass container and là voilà your inspiration terrarium is ready. I thought this was a great challenge, so I happily played along. Have you discovered Janice's blog yet? It is so ivery nspiring, she is full of fab ideas and I just love it! Go discover her here and tell her that I send you over: http://papiervalise.typepad.com/scissor_variations/

Some more photos

from my inspiration jar:

So have you finished your Easter decorations in your home yet? I started to decorate 2 weeks ago, here are some photos of my Easter home. The next photo is huge and you can enlarge it by clicking on it:

A close up from the things on the mantle:

Sweet LV, our tomcat, is quite confused what the black iron bunny thing is doing on his window sill space lol

Now we go upstairs into my studio, this is just a pretty vignette sitting on one of my desks:

And I finally soldered a 3D reliquary, which I like doing so much that I can promise much more of these Reliquaries to come this year:

I also soldered a few Easter pendants, like this one, with a Dresden bunny sandwiched between the glasses:

Here are some more of my latest solder works. The bunny pendant is sold to dear Kathy in the US and the Girl with the dove pendant to the lovely Katja Fliegenpilz in Lübeck:

Another thing I always wanted to solder are houses. This one is my frist try:

And I also did some spring inspired bird pendants:

The beautiful Ledger paper which I used for most of my photos backgrounds are a purchase from a very nice Texas gal called Jamie, the sweet baby cabinet card is also from her etsy shop called"shoparteology" I found her through sweet Lori from http://myfaeriewindow.blogspot.com/ :

Lastly I like to show you a gift container made for a friends b-day. It's an embellished German paper maché cone.

This week I embellished lot's of German paper maché Easter eggs that I will show you in my next post, or if you are curious you can alread have a look at my flickr photostream that you can always find in my sidebar http://www.flickr.com/photos/98632037@N00/

I also have lot's of my spring garden photos to share in my next post so stay tuned!

Until then I wish you all a fabulous spring time and hope to be back soon!

xoxo Carola

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

Vintage Valentine Tinsel Hearts

Click on the picture above to enlarge it, it's huge!

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottages and my first post in the new year dear blogging friends and readers! I hope you all had a great time over the holidays and are already back in full swing in 2009. I had a little problem getting back in swing with a cold I catched and then very much work in the office during the first week after the holidays, but now I have adjusted again and I'm full of creative energy which I could finally use in my studio again, making Vintage Valentine Tinsel Heart wall hangings this weekend:


For the 3 Tinsel hearts that I decorated on my mantle I used Vintage materials like orginal old German sheet music paper and old cabinet photo cards from the flea market and herited Vintage lace, as well as some Dresden foil papers and Boullion from my stash and also other supplies that I bought or swapped from/with flickr friends like Jennifer Jinette, Cerri of the Little Pink Studio, Andrea of Onehundred Wishes, Heather of Speckled Eggs and Sarah of My so called junky life.



I'm pretty pleased with the way they turned out, they have got the nostalgic look that I was hoping for. See the tiny brass amor dangling from this heart?




I also made a few pink hearts. I find these two turtle doves from Cerri, that I've pasted on a Valentine paper banner that I made myself just so sweet!

For the Valentine heart above and the Valentine heart box below and also for the Valentine heart in the last photo of this post I also used the beautiful fabric yoyos I got send from my friend Anita last year:

For the box cover I've put the yoyo on a pink vintage milliney flower:

If you are interested in one of my hearts you are welcome to send me an e-mail to the e-mail addy you'll find in my profile under contact and I'll send you the infos you'll need to decide if you want to purchase one.

Have a very good start in a hopefully creative and happy new year 2009 everyone!

XOXO

Carola