Welcome to Boxwood Cottage: September 2006

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Christmas ornament and christmas card collage swaps

Concerning my swap post from the 13th of September I resume as following:

Interested in the self made ~christmas card collage swap~ so far are:

Fiona, Maria, Daisy, Nicole, Inibi and me.

Which makes us 6 at the moment. Two more participants would also be okay. So come on friends, you know you want to craft and swap festive and glittery postcard sized christmas collage cards with us, don't you?

Interested in the *Christmas ornament swap* so far are:

Brit, Ulla, Sandy, Daisy, Margarita, Maria, Monique and me. That makes 8 and is great!

Correct me if I'm wrong please!

I think we are enough, so each of you is sending one nice old fashioned ornament (same for the collaged postcards) to each of the participants and get's one of each participant back. So that at the end we'll all have a lovely little collection to decorate our christmassy homes.

All items should be ready to send out arround November 15th to arrive at the 1st of December ! So we still have plenty of time to collect and create. The christmas ornaments can also be purchased ones, but they have to have a nostalgic or vintage look!

I'm going to e-mail you all next week with the details, presuming I have all your e-mail addies! Oh I'm excited and I'm sure we'll have fun!

Till then, take care xox

Sunday, September 24, 2006

For Nature Girl!

Chocolate swap news!

Just a note to let my chocolate swap partner and blogging friend ~ Nature Girl ~ know that I have her * chocolate swap parcel * ready to send it out on Monday!

I've made this ~ Chocolate Collage ~ for you dear * NG * to go in the parcel as well and will send it to you through air mail tomorrow! Promised! Have a happy Sunday! xox

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Mo's e-book about antique botanical prints

I've got a lovely e-mail from Maureen Gilmer, a fellow garden and crafts lover, also known as:

She's asked me to share the news about her "new e-book", containing "antique botanical prints" available free from her website http://www.moplants.com/ now, with my dear blogger friends and readers.

Online Botanical Illustrations: A Treasure Trove of Free Sources for Digital Crafts

Here are two examples of the free downloadable and usable prints:

Cool stuff for mixed media artists, don't you think?

Thank you Mo!

Still beautiful summer weather

We still have beautiful warm summer weather over here which will last at least for the next 6 days, maybe even longer, if you can believe the weather forecast, so I thought I post some more garden photos today.

Here is some autumn like decoration on my blue iron table:

And this is a new rose that I've bought a few weeks ago called "Elle" Rose of the Provence and it has the scent of peaches and lemon, so yummy!

My pink pelargonium is blooming again beautifully:

this is my Anemone Japonica Hybride "Honorine Jaubert" in full bloom now:

The look through the window:

and here is another picture which I took of the lovely angel *sigh*:

Monday, September 18, 2006

Chocolate swap and paper theatre

Tara! Oh my, bloggers what a treat! My chocolate swap parcel from my dear blogging friend "Nature Girl" from Canada has arrived yesterday evening! My neighbour has brought it over to me, when I came home from work and it was like Christmas in September! It was so exciting to unpack all these treasures in aqua and chocolate brown! My daughter came downstairs to ask me why I would make noises like "Ohhhh" and "Awwwwwww" and "OMG I love it" and "she is such a sweetheart" all the time, well then she had a look and she knew why, just have a look yourself now:

Doesn't it look just wonderful? Look at all these gorgeous things like yummy and pretty looking Belgian flower chocolate, brown flower stationery with golden envelopes, tasty chocolate and cinamon tea, beautiful notebooks, tiny flower buttons, embellishments for scrapbooking or collages, enchanting butterfly servicings, a ribbon for the gardener saying "How does the garden grow"?, a chocolate savor lip gloss and more:

NG I totally love every bit of the parcel and especially the gorgeous photo box it came in and the beautiful and thick brown paper it was packed in and the tiny butterfly banner that is very hard to capture in a photo but so delightful! You've spoiled me so much I'm deeply touched! Thanks a million my dear! I'm going to send you a personal email later today, am in a hurry now. Hugs xox

The chocolate swap was kindly organised by the lovley Robyn of "Driving Miss Robyn" http://missrobynbme.blogspot.com/ . Thanks a bunch for organising this delightful swap dearest Robyn! What a pleasure! xox

I hope blogger works fine this time and you'll be able to click on the photos to enlarge them. Sometimes it doesn't work and I don't have a clue why.

and here is my first paper theatre finally finished. It was really fun making it, thanks for the great inspiration Ulla! I'm sure I'll make some more! I've put in 2 photos because the first is taken with flash and the second without. Can you see it's snowing?

In love with an angel

I hope you've all had a nice weekend! I certainly had and I fell in love with this rusty angel :

Isn't he cute? We went to a nice country store where I saw him. Unfortunately he was much too expensive for me *sobs* . I'll show you more pictures from that country store and garden in my next post, because right now Blogger has decided that uploading 5 photos should be enough for today grrrrrrrrrrrr

Here are also some more photos of mum's collections for you.
This as you can see is her antique coffee mill collection:

and here are some more of her dolls, one of them fell asleep during the photo shooting lol:

She also has a collection of doll straw hats:

and I've zoomed in the next picture for those of you who wanted to see a close up of the hare. The wheelbarrow is made out of wood and the hare out of papier-mâché. I was so lucky to discover it a few years ago in a stationery store and because my mum's b-day is always around Easter I bought it for her as a birthday present:

Saturday, September 16, 2006

The flame of autumn

My dear blogging friend Maria from Finland has asked us to post the flame of autumn today. You can see it by night and by day in my garden and my house.

So this was last night:

and these are from today - because the beautiful sunlight is the true flame of autumn:

Thursday, September 14, 2006

As promised

here are some more pictures of my mum's home and treasures. First the two photos blogger won't let me post the last time:

Then a few pictures of another room:

and I also have some more pictures of another corner of the first room with the pram and the cupboard:

I have more for another post, if you like.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Interested in the following swaps?

There are 2 swaps I'd like to host, if there would be enough interested blogging friends.

1. A selfmade Christmas card collage swap (thanks for the idea Constance!)
Wouldn't it be great to get lot's of gorgeous glittery and festive little christmas collages to decorate your home?

2. A Christmas ornament swap
That is one I've always wanted to do. I love christmas ornaments, especially glass ornaments and old victorian ornaments. Selfmade Ornaments of soldered jewelry for example or victorian ornaments like the ones Ulla is suggesting for the class she's teaching would also be great.

What do you think?

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Christmas stocking collage

Now here is the x-mas stocking collage that I've created last Saturday. Some of you have encouraged me to post it already, although it is still late summer lol
Of course I was inspired to do it by Pam's Silver Bella post! http://pamgarrison.typepad.com/pamgarrison/ I've told you already here http://carolsgarden.blogspot.com/2006/08/studio-friday.html how much I'm inspired by her beautiful art work. Well, I can't sew so I've did a collage on card board, unfortunately it is a stocking you can't fill, it's just a decoration. Seeing that I've had already gathered so many glittery papers and ribbons etc. over the last few weeks, I just couldn't wait any longer to create something with it and this is the result:

I hope it doesn't look too much like a cast lol!

I've also started to make my first paper theatre inspired by Ullas fabulous paper theatres, but that is still in progress.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Little dollhouse world

Yesterday I took lot's of photos of my mum's antique collections and because I'm inspired by the "Club Little House" over @ http://inspireco.blogspot.com/ and also by Ulla's photos and descriptions of her gorgeous dollhouse @ http://ullam.typepad.com/ullabenulla/ I thought I'll show you the dollhouse rooms first, so this is mum's dollhouse kitchen:

better to see in some detail shots:

My mum has a room in her house where the kitchen is displayed and also this tiny living room with very old furnitures:

and further she has this displayed, which is normal dollsize:

and maybe some of you are also interested in seeing this ?

Well, I also have close up photos from the pram and the cabinet but somehow blogger decided that I can't show more photos in this post *rollseyes*. Also I have a lot more shots of mum's antique dolls and other collections, so if you like to see them I'd show more in another post.

P.S. Ulla, I couldn't find the time to get my dollhouse and stuff out of the basement yet, the good weather is back and this is no time to search for things downstairs, but I promise I'll do it sometime this year. In winter I have more time to clean up the basement and get it all out and I'm looking forward to place it in my bedroom, I found the perfect seat for it now :D