Good morning!

As promised I have a fun challenge for you today! The first of two I’ll be doing this month. And there are prizes involved!

To be fair, the grand prize of a $10 gift card to my Studio will be selected randomly and then I’ll pick some others that I like for $5 gift cards. Sound good?

And now for the challenge . . .

Have you ever looked up your birthday month to find out the history of it? Well being the history geek that I am I couldn’t resist making a challenge relating to January and how it got its name.

Waaayyyyyyy back in time, the Romans worshipped a god named Janus (Ianuarius in Latin.) He was the god of gates and doors, bridges and passageways, beginnings and endings. He was represented with a double-faced head, each looking in opposite directions.

Janus was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, the growing up of young people. He was also known as the figure representing time because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other.

Easy to understand then why the Romans named the first month of our year January, as it is the door (or ianua) that closes on one year and bridges into the next.

So, with this in mind, I challenge you to scrap a page based on one of the themes that Janus represented: a new beginning, an ending, a transition, a progression, looking ahead into your future, or looking back into your past. I’m leaving it fairly wide open for you to interpret as you wish! Just run with it!

And, I’m adding an extra little twist: Since January’s birthstone is garnet, I want you to use the colour red somewhere on your page! It doesn’t have to be prominent. Could be one tiny little brad somewhere. As long as there is something red!

And just a few more rules:

1) Once your layout is up in a gallery somewhere, email me a link at michelle AT scrapbookgraphics . com

2) Deadline is 9 p.m. EST on Sunday, January 20th. So that gives you 2 weeks. Results will be posted here on Monday, 21st (along with a new challenge!)

3) It is not necessary to use any of my products on this! Just thought I’d mention that in case anyone wonders. This is totally open to whatever!

If you caught my last post, you know my parents showed up from out of town Saturday and they dragged me all over creation yesterday keeping me away from the computer. So just in case I didn’t have a chance to do a sample layout for it, I sent the challenge to a few friends in the hopes that someone could cover it for me LOL! I did in fact end up finishing (by staying up way past my bedtime LOL!) but I also have a few others to show you now too!

 Click on the layouts to see bigger size and for credits, etc.

Here’s mine:

One from Laura:

One from Shannon:

And one from Jodie:

So I hope you’ll join me in the challenge! And have fun with it!

Now I gotta get my butt to work.  Have a great day everyone