Happy Anniversary to us!

It's our anniversary this month - this little fundraising blog has been going for a whole year and I can't quite believe it!  You've all been wonderfully generous in this last 12 months and we're growing and gaining lots of lovely blog buddies along the way - thank you all!

So, what better way to celebrate an anniversary than with a bit of bling?  So this month we want you to bring out your inner magpie and some sparkle to your creation with gems, glitter, beads or anything shiny :-)   A nice and easy challenge to encourage you all to play along this month - we'd love to celebrate our 1st anniversary by reaching 100 entries.

We have a bumper prize package this month in celebration of our anniversary worth in excess of £50.

It was a little hard to photograph to show it all clearly, so in case you can't make it out, here's a list of everything that is included in the bumper prize package:

A rainbow pack of felt sheets

A ribbon girl kit (yellow)

2 packs of antique gold effect embossed stickers

2 packs of assorted flowers

2 sheets of unmounted fairy and flower rubber stamps

a set of Papermania Christmas cling stamps

a Ladybug Crafts Ink Magnum cling stamp

4 packs of seed beads

a bunch of gold pearl sprays

a bunch of iridescent flower sprays

a bunch of gold leaf sprays

and a perfect Bow Maker MkII

If you need a little inspiration to get your mojo working, then just check out the wonderful creations from our super talented design team:

Anne

Deborah

Jenny

Lynne

Sylvie

Tara

So now it's over to you - we're looking forward to seeing all the sparkle :-)

March Winners

Good morning and Happy Easter to all our lovely followers - hope you are enjoying a fabulous day [and lots of chocolate ;-)  ]

It's been a real challenge picking our winner for last month's spring challenge - we have a record number of entries and they were all just gorgeous - spring certainly seemed to be a popular challenge with you all.  After much deliberation our overall winner is Jakki  with her beautiful soft pink and green card.  The layers are just gorgeous and the sentiment is certainly all about spring!   Jakki wins the magazine and Waltzingmouse stamp set.

For a record number of entries, we also have a record number of runners up who all get our St Luke's Lovelies badge:

All your cards were very different but all made us think of spring so thanks for sharing them with us.  Hope you'll all be back to have a go in our blingy anniversary challenge too.

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