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:

Anne

Deborah

Jenny

Lynne

Sylvie

 

Tara

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 ;-)

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:

Anne

Tara

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

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.

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!

Anne

Deborah

Jenny

Lynne

Sasha

 Sylvie

Tara

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.

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.

Anne

Tara

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 :-)

New Year, New Start

The theme this month is to give a new lease of life to something old and tired and destined for the bin…  Don’t throw it away, turn it into something magical and give it a new start for 2012 by putting it on a card! 

We have this wonderful yellow ribbon bundle kindly donated by the lovely ladies at The Ribbon Girl as our prize this month for our favourite entry so its well worth raiding the recycling bins :-) 

This isn't a challenge like some of the others out there in blogland where you recycle an item by turning it into something else - we are strictly a card making challenge site - so whatever you recycle we are looking for you to use it ON A CARD.


It may seem like a tricky challenge until you give it a little thought - I could be as easy as taking an empty cereal box and stamping on the kraft card stock inside, taking a ribbon from an old card or left over Christmas gift, or getting creative with bubble wrap for a fancy inking technique.  I hope this and the fabulous inspiration from the design team gets your creative juices flowing...

Speaking of Design Team, I would also like to welcome a new member this month - Sylvie - otherwise known as Gibmiss has gladly agreed to join us.   Sylvie has been a regular player since day one, and even sends her lovely cards all the way from Gibraltar to us for our sales and her cards are always gorgeous so I'm sure you'll find her inspirational!  Welcome to the team Sylvie :-)

Anne - using wrapping paper, a cracker and old card embelishments

 

Deborah - using wrapping paper and sweet wrappers

Lynne - using wrapping paper inner tube, doily from a party, recycled items from cards and pressies

Jenny - using twine from gift tags

Sylvie - using the back of a paper pack, ribbon from a top

Tara - using a cracker and tissue paper from a gift

So now - it's over to you - go and have a dig around in your drawers and cupboards and let's see what new life you can breathe into your old stuff.  Be sure to tell us what items you've recycled - we're excited to see how creative you can all be....   REMEMBER ONLY CARDS QUALIFY FOR OUR CHALLENGE as we are a CARD MAKING CHALLENGE SITE as the major purpose of this site is to challenge you to make cards and send them to St Luke's to sell for them to raise money for the hospice.


We'll be back in a couple of days with the winners of our let it snow challenge.......