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

Oh Tannenbaum

The tree is finally up and sparkling! One day before Santa comes he he :)

This year I put some of my soldered Christmas ornaments on the tree and really like the nostalgic look of it!

View through my Advent chandelier (as always you can enlarge all the photos if you'd like to see more details by simply clicking on them):

There is never enough sparkle at Christmas, wouldn't you agree?

Some more close ups of my my newly soldered nostalgic Christmas ornaments:

A dear friend has made me the fabric skate boot in the background 2 years ago:

There is mixture of new but nostalgic, old-Vintage and self made ornaments on my tree, but I used only my silver ornaments, no red ones this year:

The reflector baubles are very old and belong to my faves for many years now:

I was so lucky to find 8 more oval shaped huge glasses which are old stock and very rare to find over here and I used them to make 4 new nostalgic ornaments for my tree, like this one:

The sweet Tilda bird in the next photo is a Christmas present from my dear friend Anita, she actually made me 5 new birds which came in a very pretty rose box, I really love the snow flakes fabric, so sweet!

Anita has also made me this gorgeous fabric Toile de Jouy heart which I decorated on my antique armoire along with a beautiful quilted heart she made for me last year. She knows how much I love Toile de Jouy and when she asked me about the size, shape etc. I would like the heart in, I asked her if she could sew beads around the heart the way I saw it on the pretty fabric hearts from Julie Collings and the sweet heart she is she fullfilled my wish and I just love it! I got even more presents from her, enchanting fabric tags, more sweet hearts, an awesome inspiration board with toile too and a wonderful fabric bunting rose garland, but I'll have post these treasures in another post.

I leave you with another view of the whole tree in all its candle light glory (click to enlarge) and once again I like to wish y'all a very merry and peaceful Christmas surrounded by your loved ones!

Hugs Carola xox

Pretty little Christmas blog party - better late than never!

Can I still join the party? I know I'm late to Heather Pretty petals Pretty little Christmas blog party today but I was sick all weekend, had to work today and then had to light lots of candles when I came home from the office and take some new photos for the party, load them up etc. and well here I am. I just saw that some sweet party people have already posted to my last post from 2 weeks ago, thinking it was the party post, but I don't want to cheat you, so here are some new photos of Christmas decorations at Boxwood Cottage this season. The first two photos are taken in my studio

but the real cosy Christmas is happening down in my living room:

Please click on my photos to enlarge and see all the details. As most of you will know in Germany we usually don't have our tree up before the 24th of December, which is when Santa comes to bring our presents, in the evening of the 24th, not in the morning of the 25th like it is in the USA for example. And we use to have a real fir tree, no artificial ones. We went in the woods (to a tree farmer) to choose our tree a month ago, and we'll go and get it next week, so I can't show it to you at this date. Instead of it I can show you some other decorations like my all time favorite white bird cage for example. See the cute tiny stocking hanging on the cage? It's an ornament from my friend Cari Kraft and talented Cari although made some of the ornaments on my mantle (photo above).

The most important thing for a pretty little Christmas for me is candle light so I have candles and tea lights lit everywhere at the Cottage as soon as it is dark enough.

This is the place where I love to sit, have my Latte macchiato, feel cosy and read my Vampire novel when I come home from the office. I've just finished the 3rd book of the Twilight series and hope Santa will bring the forth - in English pretty please dear Santa, cause I can't stand read it in my mother tongue German, I tried but didn't like it!

Unfortunately it was to dark today to take photos of my deck and garden which is also decorated and I have feeders for my sweet feathered friends everywhere and when I look tkrough the dark window in the background of the next photo during the day I can observe them picking peanuts, cranberries, sunflower seeds etc. That is so much fun for me and I really enjoy this, it adds a lot to my pretty little Christmas feeling.

Candles make all glass things shine, so glass items like in these photos belong to my fave Christmas decorations:

Anja if you read this you will recognise that I've copied your fab idea and used my vintage enamel Guglehupf cake mold for an Advent wreath. It's just not safe to light the candles because I don't want the fir tree branches to burn lol, but I think it looks very Christmassy and it smells good too :)

I also love to decorate with red fruits like the Pomegranate for Christmas. In this bowl is one real and one glass Pomegrante. Oh and I was very lucky to find two star shape glasses, so of course I had to solder them into a silver Christmas star ornament with a cute vintage picture right away. I so wish I had the skills to cut glass in such beautiful shapes.

Merry Christmas to all my dear blogging friends and readers around the world and I hope that you will all have a joyful and peaceful celebration! I hope to get around to do another post before Christmas, but you never know, the time passes always fast, but even faster at around Christmas, at least so it seems to me.

It's already quite late, so I don't think I'll be able to visit all the party participants tonight, but I promise that I'll keep visiting all week.

Hugs Carola xox

1st of Advent, first snow & studio news

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends, readers and viewers! I'm so sorry for the long absence again, I always have so much to blog about but so little time. Yesterday was the first of Advent, only 24 days left until Christmas and I took a few photos of my festive decorations for you.

I created 3 small x-mas stockings from another template out of Julie Collings book "Pretty little felts". They are made from felt of course and lace etc. and then my dear cousin Stefanie sewed them together for me, because I have no sewing machine. I'm quite happy with the way they tuned out and decorated them on my faux fire place/mantle, you can always enlarge my photos bei clicking on them to see more details.

This year I found 2 of the gorgeous cone candles and put them in my silver vases on the mantle.

Then I decorated one of my chandeliers with silver stars, diamond pendants and glitter snowflakes as well as a new pretty silver cone. I tried to get a good picture of it with the candles glowing and no flash, but they came out a bit blurry:

Here's a sneek peak of a parcel I send out to Cerri of the Little pink studio last Friday, hopefully she'll get it soon because I put all my favorite German Living and Crafts magazines, the Christmas issues in it:

Last Sunday (November 30) we had our annual Winter magic market at my friends cottage at the country side and my Dad was so kind to build me a Christmas tree from a broomstick. I used it to present all my pendants and ornaments and it is very useful in my studio too now to organise my pendants. Thank you very much again Dad! :)

This is what my little booth looked like. The horse stables at my friends cottage are such a beautiful surrounding for our Winter magic market.

In the next photo you see a close up of one of my new Winter/Christmas pendants/ornaments. Got the sweet wintery sleigh girls picture from a scanned old postcard from my friend Anita. I think the mica flakes really give the pendant the look of snow:

On November 22nd we woke up to a real Winter wonder land here in Bremen and I started taking pictures right away, it was still a bit dark outside, but everything looked so magical in my garden and I so like that you can even see the snow softly falling down in the pictures (click to enlarge the photos!):

Here's what my front garden looked like covered in soft new snow:

Of course when it's cold outside it has to be warm and cosy inside so I lit my red glowing candle glasses. The paper/cardboard cake stand in the photo below is one of my latest creations. I used 45 year old paper lace and silver Dresdens borders to embellish it:

Next is a photo of my latest Vintage Wallpaper Wallbox, this time I chose other colors than usual. It was custom made for someone in the US with the intials M S, but she couldn't afford it in the end, because of the high mailing costs to the US and other reasons, so it's still in my studio and I think I'll have to put the letters M S off:

Talking about my studio here is a mid November picture of one of my fave corners in the studio, although it's constantly changing, meanwhile it looks much more festive:

At the beginning of November I told my mum about an old paper cutter I had seen in the latest German Country Living magazine issue and showed her the photo and told her that I would like to find one like this fpr my studio too and then she said to me "wait a moment, I think I have what you search", went down in the basement and came back up with this beautiful old paper cutter. Score!!! She was so clever to save it from the bulk garbage of her neighbors a few years ago, which was my luck now :)) Thank you mum!

I decorated it with pretty vintage ribbon on wooden spools, my new twine holder and an antique Santa ornament:

Another peek in my studio. The small glass container is filled with pretty Yoyos I got send from my dear friend Anita of My Country Cottage Garden http://ein-stueck-garten.blogspot.com/ last month:

And lastly I leave you with a photo of some very pretty Christmas craft supplies I recently purchased from Brandy over at the Brandyvine boutique:

Have a great time at the run up for Christmas everyone!

Hugs Carola xox