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, 31 May 2012

One Layer Month

This month at St Luke's there is only one rule and that is to have no layers on your card - stamp, draw, ink, emboss - whatever technique you fancy  - just do it directly onto the base card.

Now I know for some people a one layer card is a very scary prospect, it was for me when I first started to try, but it does get easier with practice - and you've got a whole month to play along and get in lots of practice and you may even end up as the recipient of this months prize.  We are being sponsored again by the lovely people over at Lili of the Valley and we have a pair of their gorgeous stamps to give away.


And so, to the wonderful inspiration parade from the design team - lots of great projects to get your creative juices flowing.

Anne - she loves one layer so much she did us two this month!

is taking a break this month while she unpacks lots of boxes after moving to the USA




Tara - I like one layer too so decided to give you double the inspiration!

So now - it's over to you - dare to go one-layer!




Monday, 14 May 2012

Mid Month Inspiration

It seems that our one layer challenge is scaring you all this month - we know it can be scary at first, but trust us, once you break your one layer duck, you'll be making them all the time as they're such fun and so easy and quick once you get to grips with them. 

So, we thought we'd offer a little more inspiration to see if we can tempt a few more of you to play along.  The easiest technique to use if you want to get lots of pattern but keep to one layer is to use masking which Deborah has done one her vibrant card.  Lynne has simply stamped and coloured directly onto her card - it doesn't get much easier than that now does it?  Sylvie stamped a gorgeous image in 3 places on her card in black and added a little colour with promarkers.   I've taken a modern approach and kept it clean and simple with a masked strip for the sentiment across a block print flower stamp.

 



Do come and join the fun - you've still got a couple of weeks to perfect your technique.

Saturday, 5 May 2012

April Winners and Design Team in Print!

It's time for a couple of announcements here on the St Luke's blog - firstly it's time to announce the winners of our anniversary "bling it up" challenge.

Our overall winner last month was Sian - she definitely met the "bling" brief head on and we loved that she took her inspiration from Jesse J's nails ;-)


Drop me an email Sian with your postal address and I'll get your bumper prize in the post after the bank holiday :-D

Our top 4 last month were, in numerical order:

Gillian - we loved your bling and big fluffy bow

Loli - your faberge style egg was an amazing creation

Vicky - just the sweetest get well soon card

Pauline - the layers of pattern were perfection

Thanks ladies - your blog badges will be emailed to you shortly.


We also have a bit of exciting news about some of the Design Team here at St Luke's - we're in print!!!   Lynne, Jenny and I (Tara) are all featured in the 100th edition of Papercraft Inspirations and we're all pretty excited about being published for the first time so hope you'll indulge us as we shout it from the rooftops ;-)  Here's a link to their beautiful blogs page where you can see a link to our cards that have been featured http://papercraftinspirations.themakingspot.com/blog/issue-100s-beautiful-blogs  and if you want to see us in paper, the magazine will be in your stores on 9th May.