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 31 October 2012

Simple Christmas

Firstly, I want to apologise for not getting around to comment on many of your wonderful couples cards last months - some of you know but many don't, my FIL is currently suffering from terminal cancer and we are doing a lot of running around to help care for him so we are very time poor at present.  I will get around to look at all your cards to vote in the next few days but please accept my apologies if I don't leave a comment - I will try to keep on top of it this month.

Now to the challenge, it probably comes as no great surprise that we're doing a Christmas challenge this month - the supermarkets seem to have given over half their shelves to cards, wrapping and chocolate already - and we are down to about 11 weeks to go I do believe.  So, here we are with a gentle reminder that you really should start to make your Christmas cards now and if like me, you need to make LOTS of them, then a clean and simple (and therefore quick to repeat) design is definitely the way to go.  So our challenge this month is clean and simple Christmas cards - think clean, graphic and lots of "white" space (open areas of any colour).  Unlike our previously unpopular CAS challenge though - this one does not have to be one layer so you can still layer it up if you like.

We have a gorgeous, and appropriate set from our most regular sponsors this month - Waltzingmouse - with their "Twas the night before Christmas" set which is brilliantly useful for Christmas cards of any style.


Our wonderful DT have come up with some A-MAZ-ING inspirational cards this month which are sure to get your creative juices flowing:

  





 Tara


So now, it's over to you - find our your Christmas stamps and papers and get creating.  We'll be back in a few days to announce last months winner and again mid-month to provide you with some more inspiration.


Thursday 18 October 2012

Simple Christmas - Are You Playing?

There's still time to play in our clean and simple Christmas card challenge this month.  We've had some stunning entries to far but you've still got a couple of weeks to get your entries in.

Here's a little more inspiration for you - this year I'm going for a Christmas tree theme in a lot of my cards - all quick and simple and easy to replicate.  Here are a couple of my designs that I just tweak slightly to make them more interesting to mass produce.



With just over 10 weeks to Christmas - it really is time to get those fingers inky - so what are you waiting for?  We look forward to seeing what you come up with.


Monday 8 October 2012

Couples winners

So, are you playing along with our Christmas challenge?  I do hope so - we're loving the entries that have come in so far.

It's time to announce the winner of the lovely set of LOTV stamps from last month's couples challenge.

Our overall winner was Louise - we really loved your unusual take on the challenge - the lovebirds are gorgeous and the simple one layer layout is fab.



Our runners up were Di - with her cute penguins, Elinir with this gorgeous easel card,  Mary with the cute pairing of dog and owner, and Susan with another fab cosy looking couple.





Thanks ladies - winners badges are on their way........