Happy Easter and oh no we'll get frost and snow!

Thought I share with you my dear blogging friends and readers some more Easter and Spring eye candy, but before I show you more pictures from my decorated home and garden, I have to show you what I got in the mail on Thursday just in time for Easter!

It is a wonderful surprise parcel from my German blogging friend Nicole of http://www.smalltreasures.blogspot.com/!

Oh how I love surprises like this! :D

See the tiny bird cage above isn't it just the sweetest? It was in the parcel along with many other treats like lots of millinery flowers, birdies, lace paper border, Vintage wallpaper and wallpaper border which I find extremely pretty, tiny buttons in beautiful colors and a collection of her gorgeous Toile de Jouy tags! Aww I feel so spoiled Nicki, thank you so much! You can click on the picture and then on the orange button to enlarge it fully and see all the details:

In the following photo is my new birdie king along with a garden thread tin box. I found both things on the first garden fair of the season:



I decorated a little Easter display around the self made nesting box:



The golden bunnies in the glass cloche belong to my faves this year. You can click and double click all the pictures in this post to enlarge them!

This glass pott is for plants or flowers but right now I use it as a storage for chocolate eggs:

Back to my garden, here is a pink display on one of my garden tables, I just love the pink filled prime roses and bought them in 5 different shades of pink. My mum once made the pottery wreath which I decorated around the pott:

Well it looks like I started the spring season a bit too early and my poor flowers are going to freeze again. The weather forecast says that we'll get a lot of snow and frost from today on until next Thursday *EEK*!

I cross my fingers that all my flowers and plants will survive these hopefully last day's of winter weather! We had such a mild winter until today and I'm not prepared for snow and frost, I want SPRING!!!

I made a nest for the fluffy chicken from a paper egg half which I simply decorated with two different Dresden gold borders:

Happy Easter to all of you!

Hugs Carol(a) xox

New Spring and Easter pendants

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers!

Spring is in the air now and I was quite productive in the last 4 weeks - whenever my back allowed me so - and can now happily present you my latest soldering works right in time for the beginning of spring and Easter. For the case that you might be interested in purchasing a pendant or even more, just drop me a line to the e-mail addy in my profile and we can sort something out. I'd be happy to hear from you! Hope you'll like my new creations. They are all two sided so that one can choose the favorite side to display.You can click on the pictures and enlarge them to see more details.

Front side or vice versa:

Two sided square pendants with Easter decor, made with lead free silver gleem solder, silver wire, vintage pictures and pearls. Size 7 cm x 7cm.

Back side or vice versa:


Front side or vice versa:

Two sided square pendants ready with different decors, made with lead free silver gleem solder, silver wire, vintage pictures and pearls.Size 7 cm x 7cm. Update Nr. 7, 8 and 9 are sold - thank you!

Back side or vice versa:

Front side or vice versa:

Two sided round spring pendants with different Spring and Easter decors, made with lead free silver gleem solder, silver wire, vintage pictures and pearls. Size is 7 cm diameter. Update: No 2 is reserved!
Back side or vice versa:

And for the french lovers:

Paris on both sides made from micro slides with lead free silver gleem solder and silver wire. Update: Paris No. 10 is sold - thank you!

And lastly I created a set of 6 cute soldered eggs to hang on an Easter tree for example. I really love how they turned out!

Made with lead free silver gleem solder. The size of the eggs is 1,5" x 2"

Update: The egg set is sold - thank you!

First side - or vice versa:

Second side or vice versa:

I hope you enjoy my photos and pendants!

Until next time at Boxwood Cottage, have a fab week everyone !

Carol(a) xox

Bad back and what's new!

New pictures from Boxwood Cottage, come see the big versions here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/boxwoodcottage/


Created with fd's" Flickr Toys. Click to enlarge!

Dear Blogging friends and readers, if you are still there, I have to apologise again for my long blog absence. I'm really sorry!

My lower back ist still hurting from the lumbar vertebrae inflammation and I still can't sit at the pc for a long time. I was at sick leave for a few weeks, even over my 45th b-day, but had to go back to the office sooner or later, now I'm back at work - with very much work to do - and it is quite hard to sit at my desk for 7,5 hours and in the evening my back is tired and I can't sit at the pc again for long. I get physical applications 2 times a week and physical training also 2 times a week and it's better, but I don't feel completely healed and I'm afraid of the bad pain possibly coming back when I do to much pc work in my spare time. Of course I check my e-mails regularly and I load some quick pictures of what's new here up to flickr every now and then and check my contacts pictures there. I became quite a flickr maniac and a swapaholic lol. When I have some spare time left and I'm still able to sit I prefer to use this time in a creative way for crafts and swaps better than for reading blogs for hours which I did before. I check my favorite blogs and leave comments sometimes but not as often as I used to do. I hope to get my full back strength back and then be able to come and blog regularly again though! Please keep checking in and don't forget me! A big thank you to everyone who checked in and left me comments during the last two month! I appreciated them a lot!


Meanwhile I'd like to link you over to my flickr account here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/boxwoodcottage/

if you like to see the full pictures which I showed you in the mosaic above and want to see what else happens at Boxwood Cottage then please come visit me there! I'd be more then happy if you would leave me a comment!

Warmest wishes from Boxwood Cottage sends y'all

Carol(a) xox

P.S.:

A post with just one picture looks so sad to me so I decided to add my latest crafts:

1. My nest for Heather Speckled Eggs Sweet little nest swap:

2. My new inspiration board made from a simple pin board, painted shabby white and then I pinned pretty papers, emphemera, soldered pieces, embellishments, jewelry, Dresdens, art work etc on the board with pretty hat pins. This was such a fun and easy afternoon project!

If you want to see more details please come to my flickr as I told you above! There you can chose the sizes you'd like to see it! As always blogger isn't cooperating with me and you can't enlarge it here grrr

Happy New Year!!!

This is my first embellished little paper maché cottage with a tiny boxwood wreath of course he he so it is Boxwood Cottage!

I like to thank Ms. Sandy Gordon of the Art Tea Life blog for the little glitter tree, Ms Natalea Kandefer of Kandleland for the gorgeous little blue bird, Ms. Heather of Speckeled Egg for the white glitter dove and the green velvet leaf, Ms. Holly of Hollydoodle for the white snowy glitter on the roof and Ms Nicole of Small Treasures for the beautiful silver and blue flower steems, as well as Ms. Shelly of the Pink Barn for the little wooden spool and last but not least Ms. Charlotte Lyons of House Wren Studio for the inspiration. I'm so thankful that I got to know all of you artsy, crafty and creative ladies out there through flickr and our blogs and for all the wonderful swaps we did. What a fantastic community we all are! You make me happy! Thank you!

Happy New Year 2008 to all of you!

Hugs Carol xox

Christmas update!

Long time no see dear readers and blogging friends, I know that and I feel very bad about it to my excuse I had a very busy season so far with lot's of office work, weekly back treatments and gymnastics, friends over to visit me, a fabulous private Christmas market which we had organised together with friends and my sisters, lot's of soldering Christmas pendants, making Christmas cones and collages etc. for our Winter magic market, lot's of swap parcel packing and so on and on. I always hoped to have some time to blog during the day or in the evening, but there rarely was any time left and when then there was my back which wasn't cooperating and asked me to go away from the pc and rest. I sure have missed you and I hope to make up for this long break by posting lot's of eye candy in this post.

I bought this gorgeous Merry Christmas glitter sign recently from Andrea Singarella over at the Velvet Strawberry blog and I absolutley love the way it sparkles in front of my golden mirror when the candles on my mantle are lit:

The oval golden frame in the next picture was a praliné box with an ugly company ad image in the oval, so I changed the image and pasted some of my Dresden borders on the box and voilà doesn't it look yummy now? I got this box from a supplier of the company I work for and I so have to ask him where he has got it from, so I can make more frames like this one:

Yummy Mercury glass ornaments on a vintage glass plate:

I also like to show you some pictures from my parents Christmassy home, well I would have liked to show you even more pictures that just this few, but Imageshack isn't working properly and wont show all the pictures today.

I'm looking forward to spend Christmas Eve at my parents home which is also the day we exchange our presents during the here so called "Bescherung". It's the first time my daughter will not be with us at Christmas because she is still in Australia but will come home in 5 weeks! :)

Now back to my home:

and studio:

Here are a few of the Christmas pendants I finished recently:

The beautiful sepia, cream and gold colored stocking in the next picture came from Jennifer die Giuseppe a flickr friend for the Vintage Christmas stocking swap:

I'm so happy that I have meanwhile send off all my swaps, it was kind of hard to get it all done during the busy season, so big sigh of relief!

The Christmas bird and Merry Christmas sign in the picture above came as a surprise parcel from my sweet blogging friend Anna aka Nature Girl and has really cheered me up big time! :)

Lastly here is some cranberry crafting I did lately and I think the red berries look very festive:

It is wonderful to know that you are out there patiently waiting for new posts and I look forward to catch up with you and visit all your blogs again during my vacation over the holidays.

Merry Christmas to all my dear readers and blogging friends in the world!

Peace and Hugs

Carol(a) xox