Crafty Smiles!

New Plastic Boxes!

We have found some great new boxes to present our Crafty Smiles Craft Kits in! Plastic, so more hygeinic than the cardboard boxes, they look great filled with their goodies!

This is the next batch ready to be delivered tomorrow to the Piam Brown Ward. With thanks to STP Nordic Ltd and Cardmaking Paradise for their generous donations.

A very generous donation from The Craft Barn

Yesterday I travelled up to The Craft Barn in Lingfield, as Sandy had contacted me to say she had some things for Crafty Smiles. When I arrived and saw just how many lovely crafty things she was giving, I was just blown away! There were boxes and boxes of wonderful things that the children will love!

Decoupage, stickers, transfers, stencils, stamps, pens - the list goes on! Stacks of things that will bring stacks of smiles from the children!

A huge thank you to Sandy and Ian at The Craft Barn for your amazing generosity and kindness.

They love the boxes!

I went into the Piam Brown Ward today to see how the trial boxes are going. They all absolutely love them! It was wonderful to hear how delighted the children were with them, and what a difference it made to their stay!

Molly, a teenager patient was there - she comes in to the ward regularly for treatment and had unfortunately left her box at home today - but she asked to see me as she wanted to tell me how much she loved it! She is a lovely girl, and it was great to chat to her and find out what sort of craft things she would like to do while in the hospital.She was in the isolation ward when I came in with the boxes, so I couldn't go in and see her - it was a special moment to meet her today.

I did meet the lovely Regan though! He loved his box too - and I discovered just how important stickers are to include!

Regan loves pirates, so we will make sure we get some pirate projects ready to go!

Here is another decorated box

Now we have an idea of what works, and know what the children are enjoying we can order in bulk and get things moving. I also need to get some more projects into the ward for the children who have the boxes already to do.

Today was a really special day. I took my daughter Holly with me, and she too was just left stunned at how special it is to make a difference to these children's lives when they are going through this time. One of the children came to say hello - his father wheeling his drip and monitor behind him - and the boy had a big smile on his face because of his craft box!

Here are the boxes!

We have put together boxes for different age groups to go in for trial at the Piam Brown Ward at Southampton General hospital. The age groups are teenagers, 8-12, 5-8 and under 5's.

Here's the bottom of the box! The Crafty Smiles sticker is on the bottom instead of the top so as not to spoil the lovely clean canvas for the children to decorate! It's all about them after all.

The box is just over A4 sized. Inside the box lid is the welcome sticker with the names of the companies who have donated to bring these craft kits to the children.

Inside each box will be a selection of coloured card and paper - this is just the card shown below.

All the boxes for the children over 5 will then have the following in them;

A special notebook.

Scissors, a retractable pencil, a special pen with 4 different coloured inks, a ruler, rubber and glue.

Felt tips - I used these fine tip pens for the teenagers, and Crayola felt tips for the 5-12 year olds.

For the teenagers I added these special pens for doodling, and wrote an article showing them how to use them.

The younger children had a special colouring book instead of the doodling.

Stickers are very important! These are for the teenagers;

And these for the younger ones;

Also lots of lovely foam stickers!

We have bought big tubs of stickers and then put some in their own little bags.It makes them more special than just chucking a handful in!

I also made some simple shape templates and printed them onto white card for the children to use.

And with a welcome letter and a few crafty smiles, the boxes were complete!

 

The story continues - Trustees are appointed!

As I have dreams of this charity growing to bring Crafty Smiles to children in hospitals across the country, I wanted to start off with it organised properly so that we can prepare for growth.

I selected two very special people who agreed to join me as Trustees of Crafty Smiles.

Mike Hill is a friend who has a lot of business knowledge. He is also a very talented photographer with a great artistic eye. Most importantly, he has a lovely kind heart and is a really nice guy! I tend to get an idea and want to fly with it full steam ahead, and I see Mike being the sensible person who will keep me in control!

Claire Glover is a lovely lady who enjoys arts and crafts. I have worked with her doing craft entertainment for children, and she has a really nice way of being with the children and encouraging them. Claire is a very calm lady who just quietly gets on with it - it will be great creating projects for the children with her and choosing what exciting things we can put in the boxes together.

In our first meetings both Claire and Mike proved their strengths exactly as I had hoped they would! I had it in mind that I wanted the craft kits to be in little lunch box sized tins with handles, that the children brought in with them when having their treatments. I couldn't find any UK supplier though, and would have to ship them in from China in huge quantities.

Mike suggested we use cardboard boxes instead, and that it would be nice to use local suppliers rather than importing. I could see his point, but inside was having a little teenager stroppy moment as I had pictured the kids in my mind walking along swinging their little tins! However, Mike's idea actually turned out for the better - as white boxes are the perfect canvas for the children to personalise and make their own. They also come flat so are great for storing.

Claire and I studied the internet and found some really lovely things to put in the boxes. The idea is to use good quality items and to make it a lovely gift for the children rather than making it a low cost budget box. Cheap felt tips never work well or last, so we will have quality all the way!

Already people hearing the idea are enthusiastic about it, and STP Nordic have committed to donating to the project for at least the next 3 years.

A cheeky name to bring cheeky smiles!

And so a name for the charity was needed. I decided on Crafty Smiles as I wanted to bring back the mischievious smiles back to the faces of the children in hospital. I wanted to give them a moment where they felt lucky to be there - I can remember when I was on the maternity ward, and they gave all new mothers a Bounty Bag - it was really exciting seeing them being given out, and discovering what was inside.

I had a logo idea in my head - I wanted the C to form a smiley face, and came up with this:

I then found a US website where designers will create logos for you, and gave them the brief but didn't show them my ideas. One person came up with this;

Amazing that it should be so close to my design! I liked the fonts used, however I prefer a proper smiley face and so I combined theirs and mine to create this:

The ladies on the forum of Cardmaking Paradise are being really supportive and are very enthusiastic about the idea - it's really great for me to have that support, I feel we are doing it together as a team.

The seed is planted!

Towards the end of 2011 I made the decision to give 10% of all membership payments to charity. I was a volunteer at the local hospice, so set up a Justgiving page and donated to them. At Christmas the total was over £500, so I decided to find a charity to support that was not just restricted to my living area. I wanted it still to be cancer related though.

I searched the internet, but could not find what I was looking for, so I asked my Design Team for ideas. Lottie gave me the link to a lovely charity called Josie's Dragonfly. Josie sounded such a lovely girl, I was really taken with her story - particularly that she used to ask her parents to stop the car so she could run barefooted in the grass and feel it on her feet. She had an amazing spirit. I looked through the site, and read that one of the things they do is to deliver craft boxes to hospitals. This really excited me, and I sent them an email asking if we could donate and help in any way. I didn't get a reply - but after reading the site again, I discovered I had got confused! I had imagined them giving individual craft boxes to children with their own little craft kit in, but in fact it was a big box of craft bits and pieces for making projects.

I decided, as I had been so uplifted with the thought of the individual craft boxes, that this could possibly be something I could do. Josie's charity do other good things with moneys raised too, and so I felt it would be better to keep this separate. If it all got up and running, hopefully I could contact them and we could possibly work together in some areas. Josie's story remains close to my heart, and I have one of the beautiful dragonfly pendants she designed which I wear every day. It turns out her birthday is the same as mine too.

I contacted the Piam Brown ward at Southampton General Hospital, which is the Children's Oncology Ward, and went to visit them to discuss the idea. They thought it was fantastic! It was very well received - and so the seed was well and truly planted and starting to grow!