Black & White Halloween creations & decorations 2013 part 1

Can't believe I didn't do one single post last month dear blogging friends and readers, but today I'm back to share with you what I was working on during September. Above for example is a witch silhouette that I cut out to decorate a lamp in my studio for one of my favorite holidays that isn't even a holiday in Germany which is Halloween. I love all things Black & White and so Halloween is the perfect opportunity for me to indulge in these neutral colors. 

Most of the things that I created last month were for my dear blogging friend Julia in Albania so I'd like to share these with you first, now that Julia has got her parcel. Julia had sent me a beautiful surprise late b-day (Jan) parcel in March right in time for Easter so she's got her late b-day (July) parcel in October right in time for Halloween :) 

I asked her a few questions in our frequent e-mails like if she would like something black too, because so far I saw mostly white things in her gorgeous studio and when she said yes she would, I was sure it had to be a Halloween parcel for her and then around the end of July we both started pinning Black & White Halloween things on our Pinterest boards and I got more and more sure about what she would like (btw, here is the link to my Pinterst board Fall & Halloween in case you'd need more inspiration. I have pinned over 1200 inspirational pictures there!) and then I asked her if she has IKEA in Tirana and she denied it so knowing Julia is a paper lover too and IKEA had just opened a new paper section I got a few more ideas on what to send her and especially on how to wrap it.  Well now below is a picture, a first sneak peek so to say, about what I sent her, already wrapped. The b&w paper and the pointing hand tag for instance are from IKEA. I cut out and glittered the silver maple leave and the black bat though:

 

The striped paper and the Love tag and the top hat tag in the next photo are also from the IKEA paper section. A top hat tag isn't that just too cool? As the top hat lover and addict I am myself of course I had to had these! I made Julia the little witches broom with a b & w paper straw:

Well and of course I had to part with one of my old top hats (no matter if my collection consists of 7 or now 6 top hats right, it's still a collection) for my dear friend Julia. It's over 100 hundred years old and I know that Julia loves all things old with history just like I do. We both have a passion for flea markets and in Albania near Tirana where she lives now apparently are no flea markets, so I had to put some vintage finds in her parcel too and a black chapeau claque seemed just so suiting for Halloween don't you think? I remember how happy I made Lisa of Tarnished and Tattered when I sent her a vintage top hat in a Christmas friendship swap once and was hoping that it would have the same effect on Julia:

I painted and altered the peat pot above and below and added a spooky hand

 and I painted and embellished the lids of tiny bonne maman jam glasses and filled them, this one with a doll leg preseved in water. Oops I think I added the water after I took this picture, but it looks a bit creepy I can assure you:

 

I also altered a vintage flea market bottle for Julia, gave it a vintage crystal glass stopper and filled it with real vintage mica:

and I felted for her this tiny white pumpkin for:

and made her a Halloween collage on an IKEA clip board for The Witching Hour:

Then I added more flea finds like the big vintage wooden spool below knowing Julia loves these and the cabinet card of a vintage gentleman which I mounted on an old black metal plate. I have a bunch of these old black metal plated found in a leather pocket of a vintage camera. They must have been used for photo taking somehow in the old days. I still have to find out how exactly they were used.

I also found her the tiny old coin purse above and put an old key and keywhole in it for Julia's further use in her creations and then I put it into the skull box (paper maché egg) that you can see below.

The black and white enamel sign is another vintage find for Julia and as you can see above I had lot's of fun cutting out and glittering gourds and pumpkins. So don't disturb their party lol

I had kind of a vintage moon theme going on for some of the things I created for Julia like this egg box that I painted, embellished and filled with tiny treats. If you are curious about what was inside the box and how Julia liked her parcel, you can hop over to her blog Vintage with Laces and see what she shares about it.

My whole Alex drawer was filled with treasures I gathered, shopped, found and created for Julia during the months of  August and September.

Once I had it all wrapped up prettily and sent it off to my dear friend I finally started creating things for our own Halloween:

Like the witches shoe above, my favorite so far, to which i had to add the sharply pointed tip and then painted it all black and added the tiny Dresden foil stars and filled it with the spooky grass, a tiny old picture of a woman, a tiny broom and a tiny witches hat I made (Julia got such a tiny witches hat too btw). I also made the black glittered bats in the photo above and cut out one bat into the paper bag which actually looks great at night when I put a battery operated tea light in it.

Then I created the black and white Halloween wreath above and some paper spider webs inspired of course by Pinterest pins like so many of my creations.

One of my vintage black type writers in the studio holds some of my creations and finds and below is a cute vintage skull on which you can open it's jaw (so I had to put somethin in it he he), that I found on etsy:

 

I further used some more peat pots to make little treat baskets for the kids like the white painted one with the black Dresden spider web, which I also saw on Pinterest. Oh and don't you like how the round eyes tag in it looks seen through the magnifying glass of my third hand tool below?

I gathered so many black and white things on top of and around the Alex drawer in my studio that I'm running out of space and I think I'll have to bring some things down very soon to decorate the living room with it for the Halloween party.

 

Btw the neutral colered gift wrapping paper rolls in my new wire paper basket in the photo above are all from the IKEA paper section in case you want some too. An no IKEA is not paying me for saying this, I just want them to keep up this great section in future. They also have the black and the brown number tags which I used for the "31" above and below:

Of course Miss Potter my vintage studio dressform needed to get spookified a bit too so she got a white mask and a black netting and I embellished her not so spooky old top hat with one of the silver glass glittered maple leaves that I made just to make her look fallish:

Further I couldn't help it but had to make a not too realistic looking spider (cause I hate real spiders, they just creep me out) with wire and beads and then I sat her in a lace spider net that I put into an embroidery hoop of course an idea that comes from a Pinterest pin too:

Right now I'm working on coffins painted with chalkboard paint like the one below, but I'm not sure it's done yet:

I'm watching you so BEWARE he he ;-)

Well I think that's all for today but I'll keep you posted on my Halloween decorations downstairs very soon I promise, which by today consists mainly out of lot's of different arranged pumpkins - no orange ones yet so, because I'll save these for carving and only use them in front of my house entrance door in the Halloween week itself. So now I'm going to leave you with another shot of the old bottle which I altered for Julia, just because I like it so.

Oh and btw if you have created something in Black and White for Halloween too, please let me (us) know in the comment section or better even post a link to it, because I'm curious to see it and you can never get to much black and white Halloween inspiration, can you?

Until next time I wish y'all happy Fall days my friends!

xoxo~ Carola

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Celia's witches shoe party at Adventures of the striped stocking blog

Summer at Boxwood Cottage garden ~ Update June to July 2013 with London shopping tips!

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage my dear friends and readers! I uploaded the pictures to this blogpost almost 4 weeks ago and haven't got around to write a post to go along. Summer was busy here and I was eager to squezze every drop out of it, but today is a cloudy morning and my last chance to get this garden update post finished in the month of August, so here we go!

These pictures I took in the far back of my yard where we cut off all the bushes of the cherry laurel hedges last year which had grown into trees already and took too much space of my little garden and too much light and they were a lot of work also. I chose a fence instead of the bushes wich I can use to grow and hang all sorts of climbers, plants and things from it and I'm so happy with the new space that I gained and it feels so light and airy now sitting there.

To have more space that I can use to plant new flowers and decorate always is a wonderful thing to me!

 

I love parasols and I love to hang things so of course I also had to hang vases, lanterns and candle holders from the parasol:

Doesn't it look so summery? I took these photos during my late May/early June vacation

It was a wonderful warm day which were very rare here this May and June:

A refreshing citrus water on a garden tray that you can just stick in the soil or in any garden pot which is filled with soil and deep enough.

I moved my potting bench to this garden corner too:

I'm still thinking about what to do with the soil/floor/ground in this corner but for now I just lay a few step stones and wooden tiles I had still lying around onto the bare ground. There are also still the fat stems of the cherry laurels in the soil which I can't dig out because of there enormous and deep root system and I have no good idea how to get rid of those until right now. Here I just put a clay pot over one and another pot with a hosta on top of it.

What I really like is that I can see my garden shed again now that the huge and dense bushes of the cherry laurel are gone. Of course I'm thinking of painting the shed white and also the fence, would you do it? Looks like a lot of work to me, but I'm sure it would be worth it!

I attached a zinc shelf to the fence which cannot rust and is a real bargain at Ikea (costs only 7,50 €) and which also is very convenient and useful for some garden decorations :)

The light is really beautiful back here on a sunny Summer day and I enjoyed lot's of time back here this Summer relaxing, meeting up with my family, my garden friends and neighbors and also reading.

You almost wont believe what a dark garden corner this was before just last Summer!

Above is a wider view about this area behind my maple tree and I'll show you some more alterations I've done to this corner further down this quite long post so if you haven't got yourself comfy yet and got yourself a drink you'll better do it now before I'll go one ;-)

Here are just two shots I had to share with you of my clay garden princess and the pretty delphinium and snapdragons surrounding her. She as every reason to smile I think.

A favorite flower of mine this year again was my peony Sarah Bernhardt with her huge soft pink and filled blossums:

And also my white snow ball peony which due to very cold and nasty wet weather in June didn't last long enough though and I had to hold up there heavy wet heads:

In June my daughter and I also spend a few days in London where the weather was as nasty as here in Bremen but where at least I could enjoy some shopping and I promised you in my last post to share some of my London shopping tips with you so here we go. I finally got around to visit Jessie Chorley's beautiful, creative and inspiring J & B shop at Columbia Road which I can highly recommend to every creative soul and I bought a few of the papers and cards and tape there which she has designed as you can see in the picture below. She was in the shop herself dressed in a 50ies dress so pretty and we got to talk a bit and exchanged e-mail adresses, she was really nice. I especially loved the old fashioned way in which she wrote all things she sold in an old ledger book which she had purchased at a flea market. Her shop is filled of creativity and whimsy(ness) just the way I like it.

The clipboards and Garden Chronicles as well as the big black bird (who is my biggest black bird or crow so far and who is already looking forward to be a highlight in my Halloween decorations this year) and the pretty aqua metal seed box are from another shop though that is quite old and famous in London it's called the Liberty of London which has a rather fabulous garden and outdoor departement that I wouldn't have expected and totally loved. What a pity that I couldn't purchase most of the things I loved there because I wouldn't have got them in my suitcase and also Ryan Air has very strict rules when it comes to overweight. Very strict indeed and there is no messing with them I can tell ya, only 1 kg too much and they want your to pay 60 GB pounds for it! So unfortunately we had to leave some of our purchases that were not worth paying that much overweight in the waste bins of Standsted airport boohoooo :(

Another fabulous inspiring shop we visited while in London was Anthropologie at Regent Street which is not far away from the Liberty btw and which so far I only new from pictures seen in my US friends blogs and which didn't disappointed me either, on the contrary I was absolutely amazed by their fabulous displays and ideas and I would have loved to move the whole shop to my hometown at once!

We bought some gifts there for my sisters birthday and other than that just the 3 door knobs that you can see in the photo below, although I could have bought lot's and lot's of gorgeous things there if I have had the money and the transportation means that is lol

I like how the door knobs and seed box I purchased in London are matching so well with the aqua colored glass and bottles I had standing on my window sill already. 

When it comes to shopping vegan foods there are quite a lot of places in London beginning at one of  the Whole foods markets and ending at Inspiral if you love raw vegan food, so if you are interested in vegan food shopping or restaurant tips just let me know. Of course we had to buy lot's of yummy vegan treats that we can't get here in Bremen too. My favorite restaurant in London also within close walking distance to Anthropologie and the Liberty was Tibits though and that although it is not a vegan restaurant (yet) it's vegetarian but with lots of yummy vegan choices. It's situated in Heddon street just behind the busy Regent Street with a lovely backstreet atmosphere and very cosy and still urban chic inside and you go around a food boat with lots of great looking and scenting choices where you can load everything you love and want to try onto your plate and then you'll get your plate weight and pay for it. If something you just wanted to take got emptied up before your nose you can be sure a cook comes from behind and is filling it up again, freshly prepared. Everything I chose was delicious and also the healthy and very yummy freshly prepared juices there I can highly recommend to you!

So before we go back to the garden I just have to share this photo of our (male) cat Riley with you who is dreaming most likely of what you can see printed onto this cushion ;-)

Another shot of my peonies which were so pretty even when they started to fade:

Another flower I wont want to miss in my garden is the foxglove as well as the alliums you can spot in the background.

Foxgloves, roses and alliums in my right flower bed:

and the peonios blooming in the foreground ah what a beautiful time that was, but luckily it's likely to come back again next season :)

A close up of one of my Eden roses:

and of a new white Allium variety that I planted last autumn and unfortunately forgot how it is called:

and a little bit closer even:

Beautiful sunny garden days at Boxwood Cottage garden this Summer:

Ah I just love my little paradise and hope that it shows!

Well let's go back to my new back yard corner and see what else I put there. As I told you in my last post I brought the willow bed down from my studio into the garden and never regretted it so far. I spend many happy hours lying on my day bed here in the garden looking up into the blue sky and reading of course. I'm a summer reader because I love to read while in my garden.It is the most relaxing feeling to me. I also aquired another parasol for this corner because July finally brought us real Summer days with lots of sun.

And in missing of a garden gate or old door which I still need to find I installed a light white lacey curtain to shade me from the looks of my neighbors which seldom but sometimes go along the path behind our row house gardens which lies between my garden and my garden shed.

So what do you think about my new garden room, how I like to call it, like it?

Would you like to come and have tea here with me?

Here the golden evening sun shines right onto my lovely Annabelle hydrangea another favorite garden flower

which I would not want to miss in my Summer garden!

Just like the delphinium and snapdragons which bloomed their best in blue and red around the 4th of July, so fitting that day with their colors, right?

Oh and here again my Eden rose, in all her wonderful beauty:

And another pink favorite rose which after her 4th or so Summer season in my garden finally grows and blooms beautifully is Giardina:

Talking about beautifully blooming blossums I also have to share my new filled hollyhock variety with you that blooms in a gorgeous apricot color:

and before you fell asleep about all these flower pictures and I bore you too much with them

I'm going to close this Summer post with a close up of this frilly beauty now:

I hope to see ya again here soon probably this autumn my friends! :)

Wishing you all happy and sunny and warm late Summer days!

xoxo~ Carola

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Cottage garden party over at Fishtailcottage.blogspot.de
What's it Wednesday at Ivy and the Elephants
Inspiration Friday at Common Ground