Medals UK’s 12 Days of Christmas 2016

12 Days of Christmas 2016

Whoo hoo it’s the 1st December

We’re now officially allowed to start getting excited about the imminent arrival of that wonderful man in the red suit! But we’re also thinking about the year that’s been and what’s to come in 2017. So as we’re getting the decorations out of hibernation we’ve been sifting through our archive of medals and choosing our favourites from the year for our Medals UK’s 12 Days of Christmas 2016. #12DaysOfChristmas

January is usually that time of the year when you decide to get fit, and there’s nothing like the Four Villages Half Marathon – Helsby  #4vhm to get you inspire you to do just that. We’ve loved working with them over the years and producing their souvenir medals. And this year we LOVED Kevin Bells’ impressive collection of all our medals too. So the Four Villages Half Marathon Medals are taking pride of place for day 1 of our #12Days

We’ll be looking to them in the new year to get us motivated into our gym gear and running off our turkey and mince pies! Good luck to everyone taking part in next year’s event on Sunday 15 January 2017.

Day 2 of #12DaysofChristmas

Today we’re looking back to a sports medal of a different kind that we created for the Azerley Estate Charity Clay Shoot.

This popular annual event celebrated its 9th year in 2016. Up until then it had raised over £78,500 for various local children’s charities since it was established in 2008. The 2016 event raised a further £20,500, which was gifted to the Support Dogs UK – an organisation, which is dedicated to increasing the independence and quality of life of children and adults with various medical conditions. A massive congratulations to everyone at Azerley Estate Charity Clay Shoot and good luck with the plans for next year’s event on 23 April 2017!

We love the fact that we get to work with so many organisations that are making such a different to fantastic and worthwhile charities across the country. Got a bit of a warm, festive glow thing going on here!

Day 3 of #12DaysofChristmas 

We’re celebrating a National Theatre institution with the commemorative coins we created for the cast and crew of War Horse. After 8 years, 3,000 curtain calls, 2.7 million UK audience members and worldwide audiences of 7 million, Michael Morpurgo‘s award winning War Horse took its final bow at the New London Theatre on Saturday 12 March 2016.

We were delighted to have been invited to custom make the coins to commemorate the event and play a small part in the history of this much-loved children’s story that became one of the UK’s most successful theatre productions.

Day 4 of #12DaysofChristmas

We’re looking to the fourth month of 2016 which saw HRH The Queen celebrate her 90th birthday, having been born third in line to the throne on 21 April 1926. Due to remarkable circumstances and the first and only abdication of a British monarch, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary became queen in 1952, following the untimely death of her father King George VI.

As a nation we came together to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s special day with celebrations organised by The British Monạrchy that spanned 8 days across April and June. To mark the momentous milestone we produced bespoke coins featuring the official, Elizabeth II Regina monogram that were commissioned by organisations and schools across the country to commemorate the very special event.

Day 5 of #12DaysofChristmas

We’re looking back to a commemorative coin we produced for one of (if not) the world’s oldest manufacturing factories, John Smedley. The bespoke coin celebrated the achievements of the textiles company, which was recognised by the press and featured on BBC News in December 2016 for it’s contributions to the resurgence of #UKManufacturing over the last year, which is worth 9 billion to the UK’s economy.

So let’s celebrate all things #ukfashionindustry #madeinbritain and of course #BritishKnitwear on the lead up to our very favourite day in the coldest month of the year.

P.S – we’ve got our Christmas jumpers on to mark the event!

Day 6 of #12DaysofChristmas

We can’t believe that we’re already half way through our retrospective look back at our year in medals & coins. And that there’s just 17 more sleeps until the big day!

Today we’re looking back to the European Veterans Fencing Team Championships 2016 that saw over 400 fencers from 20 countries descend upon Medway Park, Gillingham to compete to win the medals we produced for the British Fencing Veterans who hosted this year’s event.

Our medals featured a cut out of the British Veterans Fencing’s logo and we were delighted to hear that they received loads of compliments over the weekend of the event! It was fab to work with BVF again on these competition medals, and to know that as well as being distributed far and wide across Europe, the medals also went to a few good homes in Britain too! 

Day 7 of #12DaysofChistmas

We’re celebrating (what in our opinion is) a pretty unusual hobby, but one that we’re all pretty envious of to be honest. In July we produced the medals for the Skiffle World Cup.

Now for those of you who don’t know what a (St Ayles) Skiffle is, it’s a type of rowing boat that hundreds of communities across the country and the world build together and race. This year over 1,000 competitors in 50 boats, from as far afield as the USA and Tasmania, competed at the World Championships held at Strongford Lough, Northern Ireland.

We were gutted not to have been able to make it over to the event, which was accompanied by a full programme of onshore activities, and looked like an amazing craic! Hopefully we’ll get there next year and we’ll be able to celebrate with the worthy winners in person.

Day 8 of #12DaysofChristmas

The Monday after our work’s Christmas Celebrations… the bad heads have subsided (just!) so we thought we’d keep the fun and Xmas spirit alive by looking back at a new product range we created for the British Tennis Lawn Tennis Association.

The shiny LTA Team Challenge medals featured a frosted/polished finish and the clever cut out design means that they also double up as a handy bottle opener – genius!

#ChristmasCheers #ChinChin

Day 9 of #12DaysofChristmas

We’re celebrating some of the outstanding reviews we’ve had throughout the year. We’re delighted to be in the position to say that there’s way too many to mention them all, so we’re showcasing the review we received for the Sako 6 commemorative medal which we created for GMK Ltd as it is particularly striking.

“I have never designed a medal before and had lots of initial questions, so it was very helpful to chat with Medals UK to begin who, were very patient and the gallery of photographs on their website was an excellent reference and also to recieve samples of different metal finishes to gauge how ours could look. I was very pleased with the overall result of the Silver antique finish medal and the black presention box with silver logo looked excellent. It was a professional service throughout. I would highly recommend this company.”

A massive thank you to all our valued customers for their business throughout the year and especially to those who took time out to post such positive reviews about our service on the Review Centre website.

 

Day 10 of #12DaysofChristmas

We’re off to the Regional Karate Finals for one of our longest-standing clients, GKR Karate.

Hundreds of participants across the country, from 7 through to 70, competed in the regional finals in September with the hope of making it through to the National Finals, which were held in November 2016.

We love the antique finish and the cut-out design of these GKR Karate medals – definitely a fetching memento for the winners to take home and cherish their achievements!

Day 11 of #12DaysofChristmas

We’re starting to get in the Festive ‘Spirit’ (see what we did there!) looking back to the medals we’ve created for this and previous years for the The International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC) Awards

Recently the IWSC hosted their Annual Awards Banquet at London’s Guildhall, celebrating the very best of the wine and spirits industry nationally and internationally.

We had fun sampling some of the winners’ products, which included Lidl UK who received awards for ‘Retail Spirits Buyer of the Year’ and ‘Innovator of the Year’ and Marks and Spencer who celebrated a hat-trick winning the ‘Retail Wine Buyer of the Year’ award for the third year in a row. Congratulations to all the winners of this year’s awards and we look forward to hearing about all of the industry’s successes in 2017 from the IWSC – and of course sampling some more of their goods (responsibly of course!).

Day 12 of #12DaysofChristmas

We can’t quite believe that it’s the final day of our #12DaysofChristmas Countdown and that means that there’s just 8 more days until the big man makes children’s dreams come true.

It seemed only apt therefore that our final day looks back to medals we produce for a phenomenal children’s charity Little TroopersLittle Troopers support the children with parents who serve in the British Armed Forces and they help them deal with being separated for long periods of time.

Anyone who has loved ones in the armed forces knows how dangerous and life-changing the impact of the job can be, so to know that their children and families are being supported is a burden lifted for these service men and women, let alone the direct impact it has on the children. We’re proud of our long association with this, and all the charities we work with and implore you to give generously whenever you can and especially at this time of the year so that they continue their support.

 

So we’ll be signing off now for the rest of the year, but we’d like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and much happiness for 2017, and leave you with a small gift of what’s to come in the new year.

So check out our video below…