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.

Wednesday 29 February 2012

Love and Lace

Well it seems our recycling challenge was a challenge too far for most of you as our entries were the lowest ever - sorry :(    Hopefully you'll find our new challenge as little easier to play along with.  This month we're bringing out our romantic sides, not just for valentines, but any romantic occasion - anniversaries, weddings, engagements to just a card to let them know you love them - we want to see the theme of love with the addition of a little lace for a romantic finish.

Our prize this month is this fabulous set of 3 stamps from La Blance which would make great images or backgrounds as they are lovely big stamps.  They have been kindly donated by Sasha who won our challenge in December is back this month to Guest DT with us.  Thanks Sasha - it's great to have you with us :-)


So - how about a little inspiration from the Design Team?  We have some cracking cards for you this month - do stop by our personal blogs for more details and to leave us a little love - we do so enjoy your visits!








You've got until noon on 29 February to get your entries in - remember you can enter up to 6 cards for each challenge.  We'll be back in a couple of days with the recycling challenge winners.

Monday 20 February 2012

Mid Month Reminder

Just a quick post today to remind you all that you still have just over a week to get your entries for our current love and lace challenge in so you can be in with the chance of winning those lovely La Blanche stamps.  Valentines may be over, but there's still plenty of reasons to share the love!   For those of you who prefer the CAS look, the lace element can be interprative - see our mid month inspiration designs below.





Friday 3 February 2012

Recycling Winners

Whilst we didn't have a huge number of entries last month, we did still get some totally rocking entries to our recycling themed challenge.

Our overall winner was Margaret K who we all felt really took the recycling spirit to heart and created 2 fabulous cards using mostly brown paper from her stampin up deliveries and the ribbon cut from inside clothes (you know those annoying hanging loops they always put in, and I for one, always cut out!)  This source of ribbon featured quite a lot in cards entered for our challenge so it seems I'm not the only one who cuts it out and saves it - as I tend to mostly wear black or teal though, my stocks of it are pretty colour limited!!!!

This first card Margaret made features a simple torn and embossed paper with a fabby flower made from layers of the same paper - I bet you're all looking for your last stampin up delivery now aren't you......


For the second card Margaret got even more detailed with the paper with layered stamping, embossing and pleating - again another knock-out way to use up stuff that would just end up in the bin and who would have guessed you could make such gorgeous cards from stuff you would otherwise chuck!?!?   I hope you're all going to look at stuff with fresh eyes from now on :-)


Margaret wins the gorgeous yellow ribbon kit kindly donated by The Ribbon Girl - I'll be in touch over the weekend with your badge Margaret but if you see this before I get chance to mail you, drop me an email thought my profile with your address details and I'll get the kit in the post to you asap.



Our 3 runners up were, in no particular order - The Crafty Den, Vicky and Jenjoy.

 Denise from The Crafty Den made great use of items recycled from clothing - the ribbon from around some Christmas PJ's and the tag from inside a t-shirt.  Great recycling and fabulous easel card.

Vicky's card caught our eye both for the sheer simplicity, but also for having one of the more unique recycled items we saw in the challenge - some washers from the packaging of a "posh pair of secateurs".  They went perfectly with the masculine themed card - again far too good for the bin!!


Jenjoy gave us perhaps our most extravagant bit of recycling - this gorgeous flower embellishment is actually from an old necklace!  The shapes, colours and lines of the card teamed with this one off embellishment really make a strikingly elegant card.

Your winners badges will be emailed to you over the weekend ladies - we hope you show them off to the world to show your recycling prowess!


Don't forget to check out our current challenge - get into the love groove and you could win some La Blance beauties :-)