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 March 2012

Spring into Spring!

Hello everyone - hope you all managed to find a little crafty time on your "extra" day yesterday - now it's the 1st of the month so time for a new challenge and this month we're looking for you to spring into Spring!   Anything spring related goes - fresh spring colours, flowers, animals, Easter, mother's day - whatever floats your springtime boat - banish the grey of winter and look forward to the joys of Spring.  

The DT inspiration follows, but first a little update for you...   Unfortunately the total of money raised hasn't gone up much since Christmas as I haven't managed to do a fair this year as yet - the Valentines mini fair St Luke's were organising at The Crucible Theatre was cancelled due to low ticket sales (the fair was an add on to a matinee performance).  St Luke's have a new community fund raising co-ordinator so I am hoping she'll find some more fairs for me to attend very soon.  On the plus side though, I did go and pick up almost 200 hundred new cards that have been donated since the Christmas fair - do accept my apologies if I'm not very speedy in thanking you for your donations - I do this fund raising in my spare time and do work full-time and there is only one of me so I have to fit it in where I can.  I try to get to the hospice once a month to collect all the packages and I then take them home to open, sort, bag and price and resort into categories ready for sales.  I store them all at home too so tend not to collect them too often when I haven't got a fair coming up so I don't run out of room in the spare bedroom for all your generous donations.  I just wanted to give you all a bit more of an idea of what is happening at this end as I know a few people think the hospice does the admin, but to keep their costs down (this is all about raising money for them after all) I am doing it all, so I am sometimes a little slow....  I just don't want you to think that cards aren't arriving or that I'm not grateful - they are and I am soo, so grateful for every card we received - as the challenge has grown it is a little more "admin" than I imagined and I will try to get better and quicker at it!   Do bear with me - if you would like to get confirmation that your cards have arrived, please put a scrap of paper in with them with your blog or email address and I will send you an email to confirm receipt and thanks.

Ok - enough admin, let's get on with the eye candy and the prizes for March - and we have a cracker of a prize this month - a gorgeous and ever so useful set of Waltzingmouse flower stamps (valued at £14.99) generously donated by Clare Brennan, Waltzingmouse owner and I'm throwing in the current edition of PaperCrafts Magazine from the USA which is packed full of amazing inspirational card designs.



You've got until the end of March to play along for the chance to win and winners are decided by the DT team not a random draw so give us your best work - you are free to play along and win the prize whether or not you to choose to donate your cards or not.   In case you're stuck for ideas, here's what the talented DT team have come up with to inspire you - visit our blogs to find out what we used and how we made them:





 

So now it's over to you - dig out your spring stash and enter our challenge  and do tell your mates about us too as we'd like to grow our followers and players before our anniversary challenge next month for which we will have a HUGE anniversary prize - just giving you a little advanced heads up ;-)

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Wednesday, 21 March 2012

Mid Month Reminder

You still have a few days left to play along in our spring into spring challenge and win our fabulous stamps and magazine prize package so don't forget to get your spring colours out and play along.  Need a little more inspiration - well here's what we have to share:



We look forward to having you play along - we're heading for record entries this month so please help us get there.

Monday, 5 March 2012

February Winners

It's time to announce our winners for February's Love and Lace challenge - we had some beautiful entries so it was a tough decision, but our overall winner was unanimous - Helen won our hearts (and the great set of La Blanche Stamps) with her wonderfully romantic card in soft shades of creams and blues.


Our runners up this month were:

Pauline P - the lace on her card really caught our eye, as did the gorgeous rolled roses with romantic pearl centres.

Di - again the lace really made this card stand out and the fancy border just added to the romance of it all.


Clare certainly hit the love theme straight between the eyes with her gorgeous wooden letters and the distressed embossing gave it a vintagey romantic feel.


Val's image, distressing and use of colours and lace made for a wonderfully romantic vintage creation!


Congrats on making our top 5 ladies - badges for your blogs will be winging their way through cyber-space.  Helen, please drop me a line with your details so I can get your physical prize in the post to you.


Don't forget to enter again for this months' Spring into Spring challenge to win yourselves the Waltzingmouse stamps and PaperCrafts Magazine.