Inspiration Elevator December Challenge

You may recall that the purpose of the Inspiration Elevator challenge group is to take our scrapbooking to the next level, to stretch our creative process and to mature as artists by embracing challenges that make us think, work and grow. You can view all of the challenges at the Inspiration Elevator Blog.

We are thrilled to welcome guest artist Christy Riopel to Inspiration Elevator this month. You may recognize her work as she is a regular contributor/write for Canadian Scrapbooker magazine.  

December's challenge for us and for you comes from the uber prolific Laurel Seabrook. Here's the challenge she posed: 

My challenge for December. I love Christmas, everything about it. Decorating my house, making gifts, baking - I love it all. My challenge to you is what is Christmas to you? What is one thing that evokes special memories and truly brings out the Christmas spirit for you. It could be a decoration, photo, song, recipe. Perhaps it is a tradition that you did as a child and now your children do. Maybe it is in the 'special' dinnerware that comes out only at Christmas. Scrap it and tell us all about it. Now for those who don't celebrate Christmas, let's hear about a tradition that makes your celebration special.

Christmas to me, is a lot of things:

~gift giving

~decorating the house

~baking all those yummy goodies

~making and mailing Christmas cards

But the most important part of Christmas is spending time with family and friends. So that's part of what I went with for this challenge. I also added a tradition, since my parents divorced and my mom remarried, my stepdad and mom wouldn't come to our Christmas Eve family get together. So before we head to one of my siblings house Christmas Eve, we all visit my Mom and stepdad for a few hours. We have been doing this for almost 20 years, so I guess we could call it a family tradition;)

Here is my layout using Fancy Pants Merry Little Christmas line:

I added some stitching, stamping and misting:

along with some bling on my tree:

Would you like to see what the rest of our designers, and our guest designer, created with this challenge? Of course you would, so here are the links to each one's blog:

Laurel Seabrook
Jodi Wilton
Michelle Hernandez
Ann Jobes
Laura Whitaker
Lisa Moen (Thanks for visiting!)
Christa Uttley
Cathy Harper
 Lisa Spiegel
Joanne Burton

Guest designer: Christy Riopel

I hope you feel inspired to play along with our challenge this month, and when you do, please share it using the linky tool on our Inspiration Elevator blog and/or our Inspiration Elevator Facebook page. We'd LOVE to see what you made!

Thanks for stopping by and sharing your day with me!