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.

Saturday 31 December 2011

New Challenge Starts Soon

Please note - the January challenge goes live in the early hours of the 3rd January - please pop back then to check it out.  

Happy New Year from all the St Luke's DT - we look forward to sharing an exciting year of challenges with you all in 2012 :-D


I'll leave you with our traditional New Year rhyme - I think it may be a "Yorkshire" thing but as a child (the youngest in my family) I was always made to go outside just before midnight with a lump of coal and I had to knock on the door, say the poem, and "bring the New Year in"  so...

 Happy New Year, Happy New Year
Plenty of money and lots of good cheer
A horse and a gig
And a big fat pig to kill next year

Hole in me stocking, hole in me shoe
Please can you spare a penny or two
If you haven't a penny, a ha'penny will do
If you haven't a ha'penny then God bless you!

at that point I was allowed in and got a coin in exhange for the coal (I think the coal represented being able to keep warm all year) and allowed back into the warmth!   Therefore I wish you all warmth, wealth and happiness (the coal, the money and the cheer) and whatever the horse, gig and pig (I think that's for enough food) are meant to represent.  And of course - our extra wish - lots of creativity ;-)

A bit strange I know, but they do say up here that "there's nowt so queer as folk!"
Do share your New Year traditions with us in your comments :-)

Friday 30 December 2011

Let it Snow!

This month our challenge is "Let it snow" so we're looking for snowflakes, icicles, polar bears, penguins, snowmen - anything goes as long as its cold and frosty so plenty of opportunities to get your glitter and crystals out :-)

Our prize this month has kindly been donated by our very own DT member Deborah  - thanks so much Deborah :-)  As Deborah, like me, is a huge Waltzingmouse fan, she's decided to offer another one of Claire's wonderful sets - Dainty Doilies which is  a wonderfully useful and versatile set.


We'll be back to announce November's winners in a few days.

So time for the DT eye candy - the team have come up with some amazing and varied cards for us this month.


So now we've inspired you - get out your dies, snowflakes and glitter and let's get a chill on and hope that the snow just stays on our cards and not on the pavement....

Now that our challenge is growing - which is wonderful - we've decided to set a limit to the number of entries to make it fair for everyone - so from this month onwards you can enter a MAXIMUM of 6 ENTRIES per month.  Entries over and above 6 will be deleted.  I do hope this won't offend anyone or put you off from playing along, but we do need to try to keep a balance.

Wednesday 14 December 2011

Mid-month Update

Hi everyone

Just to let you know that there will be no mid-month inspiration post this month - sorry but with the countdown to Christmas now getting ever closer, the DT and I are rather busy.  I will get around all your entries to comment before the end of the month but it might not be until the Box Day lull.....  Please accept my apologies.

Also, as I normally prepare the posts to go live at midnight each month, giving that at the end of this month that would be with the chimes of Big Ben, I'm afraid I may be a little too drunk to see the keyboard....  So with that in mind and to give us all a little longer to prepare our DT projects, the new challenge will be going live on Monday 3rd January.  Do come back then to check out our new challenge - it's a good one to start off the New Year ;-)

In the meantime, can I take this opportunity to thank you all for playing along so far, and to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a great slide into a Happy and Healthy New Year :-D

Tara
and the St Luke's Charity Cards Challenge Design Team



Wednesday 7 December 2011

November Winners

Sorry it's taken a while to announce but with Christmas coming it's getting quite busy in our house so I've been struggling to find time to collate all our votes.

Our winner this month was Sasha for her wonderful white on white layered snowflake - we just love the intricate yet simplistic design - and of course all the glitter ;-)  I will be in touch via email for your details Sasha so I can get your LOTV stamps in the post - hope you have fun with them!

Choosing our runners up this month was very difficult as we had so many entries - Hazel gets a special mention for an astonishing 18 cards - well done Hazel!

Our runners up this month were:

Sylvia-Anne - who made great use of snippets to create this gorgeous wreath. 
Vicky with this delightful little bird and luscious ribbon.


Caroline with her delightful little bear - we all loved your cool colour combo.
Sue produced a lovely set of cards all in traditional green and red which are just so simple and elegant.

 

We loved all of Mary J's entries but this little guy with his rather sad looking bear left out in the snow really caught our eye.
 

Blog badges will also be winging their way to you ladies in due course.  Thanks so much for all your wonderful entries - hope you'll all play with our snowy challenge too ;-)