UKS - the way forward

[Beautifullily]

Hi MaryAnne
I hope 2016 is a better year for you. Thank you for your hard work, I have made some wonderful friends in real life that I first met through UKS.

I mostly use UKS for the challenges rather than inspiration. I thought the cybercrops that ran in the past were great fun, although I imagine it takes lots of co-ordination. Maybe each house could host a quarterly challenge that runs over a weekend??

As I have to resize and upload photos from my PC I only do so for challenges. If it was possible to upload photos from my phone I would probably share more pages - I don't know if that's the case for others. With people sharing more pages then the opportunity for finding inspiration would be greater and I would probably visit the gallery more. The kit club I belong to does a 'meet me on Monday' feature where subscribers share their favourite pages etc - could you do a member spotlight??

[Natoni]

I very rarely post on forums, but do read most of them and love reading them
It would be a shame if UKS closed as i love looking at peoples pictures and ideas, I also like learning new techniques

[Scrappy~Sarah]

Sadly, I am sorry to say, I rarely pop in as I am not a team member, or house member. I have a lot of things that are on my time, so scrapping is difficult to find the time. I have loved the site for the cybercrops and the camaraderie that was a part of that, but I know that suffered in it's later years. In my early years on the site when I started out, I was on here a lot and learnt a lot .. but I found it becoming harder to chat to people on here. I am very grateful to the time given by all in everything for the site, but sadly I have found it easier to find inspiration like many from Pinterest and Facebook more of late. I have popped in when I heard others talking about inspiration, or classes etc they have found/enjoyed on here .. and that has come via social media. I am part of an unoffical UKS group on Facebook, and people can post snippets from the site on there to signpost people there (hence knowing about this thread) .... I am sorry I cannot be more positive, but I am sure you would rather it be and honest post? To be honest, I know there has been summer stash bashes .... but I learnt about them too late, plus also summer holidays can be a nightmare for time on my own to scrapbook. It would be sad to see the site go in saying all of this, as there is a lot of inspiration to be found on here from tutes to layouts etc ... but as said before, time is my enemy

[janetlinda56]

I come on here every day, I do lots of reading but rarely post, its become very quite, the social groups haven't helped with that I am sad to say.

[soojay]

Hi MaryAnne- thanks for managing to keep this place running with all the RL stuff going on and your own health problems. I Love this place and would hate to see it go. I adored this place when it was first set up and watched every thread and joined in with loads. I can remember singing along to a "live chat" one years eve as well- those were the days I join in with the odd swap and the general scrapping thread mostly now and of course the sponsors links are great. I probably pop in at least twice a day to check stuff out. Having said that I do believe that family must come first as should your health. I am more than happy to help out in any way to keep things running , if thats what you would like.

[stitching lady]

I really love UKS and am saddened at the thought of moving to purely a Facebook group. Whilst I do use FB occasionally I find that my news feed tends to be very clogged up with things I'm not really interested in. I also worry about privacy with FB.

I take part in Scrap-a-sketch and find the discipline of doing a monthly LO brilliant. I upload photos from my phone and I found an easy to use app that will resize pictures first, so they are the right size for the site. I would like to help but am unsure what I could usefully do.

[Mary Buttons]

I love it on here it is family to me my Scrapping family, I've tried fb and really can't get on with it at all, things jump all over the place and I can never find anything where as here the threads stay in order of entry which for me makes far more sense.
I love the challenges and try to do them all each month.
I am a widow living on my own and without this site I would be bereft feel far more isolated especially from like minded folk.

[Mary Buttons]

I do hope UKS remains as I really really really can't abide fb I can never keep up with it can't find posts until days later if I'm lucky and as for people having trouble with the gallery here there is nothing easier and if you put in a thumbnail picture and the larger one into the description you can get far more in your gallery. I do have to delete pages and at the moment I am deleting 2012 pages but as I probably put more into my gallery than most I don't see what the trouble is. Please don't go over to fb I won't be able to cope. I've already come out of one of the teams I was in as I found it too difficult when they changed from here to there.

[DJG]

Sorry to hear you've been unwell MA I hope you're feeling better now. I too would be sad to see UKS go having been a member since 2007 but whatever you decide I'm sure a lot of thought will have gone into it. I've added a link to your post in he cutting machine section, hopefully you will get some feed back from those members too

[Voodoo Vixen]

A lot of folk I have spoken to admit that their scrapping has fallen to the wayside (myself included) but quite a few have also said that this new year 2016 they wanted to get back into it again! Me too! I would love for UKS and all the invaluable info and support that comes with it was still there but also recognise that I have to be involved in it for that to happen. Hopefully it will continue and we can get it to be the fun informative place it used to be.....

[Pink]

Sorry to hear you have been unwell Mary-Anne. I hope this year is a better year for you. I hope UKS stays as it is. I think it is far too big and nice for FB. I have had a stressful few years and had 0% mojo, but this year all is going to change

[Pink]

It's obviously been a while for me as my kids are 3 years older now

[__TJ__]

firstly maryanne i didnt know you had had a heart attack, im so sorry to hear that it must have been terrifying for you. im very happy to hear that you are on the mend despite family issues.
not sure i really have the right to comment because ive been AWOL for so long, but UKS will always have a place in my heart as the first online community i joined. before facebook came along this was my home page and the place i met some of my closest friends. Ive been separated from my stash for a couple of years now and have tried to struggle on and scrap but knowing i have fourteen green holographic wheelbarrows buried somewhere in there i dont want to buy one more just for a page. I have been scrapping more recently but havent been on UKs for a fair while.

that all said, id donate any day of the week, and timezones notwithstanding id happily help out in any way i can. have to learn my way round first
sometimes things come into our lives and they are super important at the time and then they move on or you move on and its over, this is not that. id be gutted if UKS wasnt there - even if we dont talk as much as we used to.

i made so many friends here, and i miss that.

[jackie40]

Happy New Year to you, and again I want to thank you for providing this great platform.

I must admit that I don't use it as often as I used to, but I would hate to see it go has it has always provided a great source of craft inspiration.

The donate button sound like a good idea.

[Ladybing]

Hi MaryAnne, I am sorry to hear about your heart attack. I often forget to sign in because I think I was confused about all this house members and teams stuff and I just wanted to chat and have inspiration on the main boards. I came here in 2011 shortly before moving to the UK and I loved getting info from local people. I like the rest use fb more than forums although having said that if there was more discussion and challenges (who doesn't love a good challenge) I would come back -that takes time. i don't mind hosting challenges and such. Although I must confess I don't understand the points thing either. I just want to do a challenge and post it.