What is St Luke's Hospice?

St Luke's is a hospice which cares for people aged 18 and above throughout Sheffield who have incurable illnesses. Their aim is always to control the patients symptoms, alleviate pain, and give them the best possible quality of life – all free of charge. It costs £6 million per annum to keep St Luke's open, and government funding, via NHS trusts only provides one third of the funds required, which means the Hospice has to raise a staggering £4 million each year to provide this vital end-of-life care.

This challenge was set up by a St Luke's Supporter who has seen first hand, the amazing care given to patients through St Luke's and whilst donations are now closed we would like to thank all our donators for their wonderful contributions.

Thursday 30 June 2011

Come Fly with Me!

Hello everyone - thanks for joining us again for another new charity card making challenge in aid of St Luke's Hospice.  This month we want you to fly with us - make any style of card you like but include something that flies – a bird, butterfly, fairy, angel, plane, hot air balloon or even Pegasus!  This month, as well as awarding our winners badge to the cards we all think best fit our theme - one of our Design Team, Ciara, has kindly donated a prize which will go to the best online card (do remember to post your cards online as well as sending the physical ones to the charity for sale).  The prize is a Ribbon Girl bundle - blue to match our flying theme.

PRIZE PACKAGE FOR JUNE'S WINNING CARD
Blue Bundle of Ribbons and Buttons - donated by Ciara

Before I show off our flying inspiration for June - there is the small matter of showing off the winning cards from May's pattern challenge.  We had 4 winning cards this month - ladies your cards are now in our showcase.  Our winners in order of entry were:
  • Vicky (no 2)
  • Gibmiss (no 5)
  • Mary J (no 6)
  • Maureen (no 7)

Great job ladies - lots of lovely pattern from all of you - your winners badges will be winging their way through cyberspace shortly - please display them on your blogs to help us promote our challenge and to show off your great talent :-)

OK - now let's show off the fantastic work of the design team - we all managed to select a completely different "flying thing" without any collusion on our part so let's see how many different flying entries we can get.  There is no limit on the number of entries you can make, and you can combine us with any other challenge out there - all we ask is that you mention and link to our challenge from your post and don't back link your entry to an old post.

Full details of all our cards can be found on our blogs - click the name to follow the link to the post - and don't forget to leave us a comment so we know you stopped by :-)




Can't wait to see what you come up with - let's get flying!  We're hoping for 50 entries online this month so once you've played - tell all your friends to play too - THANK YOU :-)  Let's see if we can get to 500 donated cards by the end of summer - we've already had over 300 so we're well on our way to this target!





Friday 17 June 2011

Mid-month Inspiration

As we are a monthly challenge, not a weekly one, we know that people see the challenge on the 1st, intend to play along, but then forget about us with all the weekly challenges that come along in between.  So from now on, we thought we'd do a little mid-month inspirational post each month, to remind you what the challenge is while you still have time to play along - particularly as there is the chance of a prize every month now for our favourite card.

So, you still have a couple of weeks left to "come fly with us" - your card can be any theme as long as it has something that "flies" on it.  Here are a couple of new cards to hopefully inspire you to play along:

Lynne went with this lovely bird, with lots of embossing and detail.  Click here to read all about it.


Deborah did a masculine card with her hot air balloons for her first card so has gone all pink and girly with a fabulous Pagasus!


I decided to go for a masculine card for a change as I did something so girly the first time.  The details are on my blog here.


I hope this post has jogged your memory and made you want to play along with us this month.

Best of luck!

Saturday 11 June 2011

Our First Fayre.......

....and we're off!

I hope you can all see - we now have a totaliser on our little blog over on the right hand sidebar ......   We began to sell the wonderful cards you've been donating to us at St Luke's own Summer Fayre this afternoon.  Unfortunately there was very little summer to be had in Sheffield today, so it was wet and windy for a lot of the day so we didn't quite get as many visitors as we'd hoped, but despite the weather (us Yorkshire folk are a hardy lot!) we did raise £125 for the hospice which is not bad considering we were only open for 3 hours!

So, thank you to every single one of you who has so far taken the time to make a card (or in some cases a whole box full - you wonderful, generous souls!) and send them to us, they are now, REALLY starting to make a difference :-)

Here are a couple of photos of the stall, and apparently, I HAD to be in them - so frame these photos as I can assure you, my face doesn't get in the frame very often so these prove just how committed to the cause I am!



There will be more sales going on over the summer, so keep an eye on the blog and the totaliser and let's break the target!!!

To all you lovely people who are already involved - I can't stress enough how much your support of my idea means to me so THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!

Tara (aka Craftilicious) xxx

Tuesday 7 June 2011

St Luke's Summer Fair This Saturday :-D

Hello to everyone who is following our little charity challenge blog.  I just thought I'd do a quick post to let anyone who is local know that we will be selling the cards so far donated through the challenge at this years summer fair at St Luke's Hospice itself this Saturday afternoon.

The details from the hospice's site are below - now if you could all start a little sun-dance, that would be great as the forecast is pretty bleak thus far....... :-(


What's on at this year's Summer Fair

This year’s Fair in the St Luke’s grounds on Saturday 11 June from 1 to 4pm will include a whole range of new attractions, including a Food Court with a range of international cuisine and a Hog Roast.
And making a welcome return for the second year will be the Kelham Island Brewery beer tent.

  • The grounds will be packed with more than 20 stalls including bric-a-brac, cakes, toiletries, plants and the always popular secondhand book selection.

  • There will be special attractions, rides and games for younger members of the family and music from live performers throughout the afternoon.

  • Admission is just £1, and free entry for children.

  • There’s no parking at the hospice on Summer Fair day but there is an official park and ride scheme operated by bus company First and Tesco, with regular free buses running to and from the Tesco Abbeydale Road car park throughout the afternoon from 12 noon onwards.

  • “Last year’s Fair raised more than £12,000 and attracted a record number of visitors,” said Events Fundraising Manager Anna Sheppard,

  • “As we celebrate our 40th anniversary we aim to shatter that record and give all our guests an afternoon to remember.”


If you're local to Sheffield and can make it, do pop by and say hello I (Tara) will be manning the stall from 1 til 4pm and hope that all your generous donations so far will start to raise a good chunk of cash for the hospice.  I'll pop back after the fair to start our "totalizer" on the blog so you can see how much your efforts are raising.

The "come fly with me challenge" for June has 3 weeks left to run, so plenty of time to enter a card - there is a prize this month too.  I'll be back next week with some more flying inspiration :-)

Thanks and best wishes

Tara (aka Craftilicious)