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 ;-)







7 comments:

  1. How fab - I'm the first entry! I'll be posting lots to this challenge!

    Gorgeous DT inspiration!

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  2. Oooo, lovely Spring theme! And what fabulous prizes!

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  3. Nice to meet you! Found you via Jenny's oh-so-lovely card. Love the idea behind the blog. Can't send you this entry (it's in the mail to the bday boy) but will send some cards off to you. Happy Frühling!

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  4. Fabulous DT inspiartion.....as always! Thank you for a lovely challenge x

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  5. Spring will definitely get us all going! Thanks for the inspiration ladies. Vicky x

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  6. wonderful theme- nice cards from the team
    Elma

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  7. Yay, I got to be the last entry too! As you can see, small things make me laugh!!

    Thx for a fab theme!

    M x

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