Scrapbooking is more than just a hobby—it’s a way to preserve your legacy, memories, and personality. Each page you make is infused with your own creative identity and is a unique form of self-expression. From color selection, creative design choice, and the techniques you favor, your pages are a part of who you are. No matter your crafting preferences or experience level, your scrapbook pages are the perfect way to exercise your own creativity.
One way to really put your crafting prowess to use is to combine several different elements into a single layout.
One of the most striking elements displayed in this “Happy Days” 12″ x 12″ layout is the use of a large Cricut® shape as an overlay for an entire page. The sunburst effect on the left page was created by using a large sunbeam shape from the Cricut® Artbooking Collection with smaller pieces of cardstock and patterned papers behind it.
By using a large Cricut® shape as the primary element on this page, it was quick and easy to make it stand out. Finding new and innovative ways to use Cricut® shapes in your layouts is a great way to make your mark and create beautiful, unique pages. You can customize this type of background even more by stamping small patterns to peek through the overlay.
Another fun way to add to some distinction to your pages is to use die-cuts or hand-cut images to decorate your pages. Using these types of elements in your artwork allows you to exercise your creative freedom to a greater degree, as you can choose your own colors, how often they are used, etc.
Here, you can see how a simple die-cut and stamped sentiment create a beautifully simple accent that’s unique to this page.
One last way to set your layouts apart is to make your own pocket cards. Pocket cards are a great way to create a distinct, patchwork effect in your layouts, and making your own yields an even more striking result, like the page you see here.
By using small stamps, sequins, a few of the die-cut or hand-cut shapes we showed you earlier, or even a few small photos to craft your own pocket cards, you’ll be able to tailor the feel of your layout to be even more personal and unique. Just look at the striking effect this row of pink die-cut flowers adds to this custom pocket card!
These are just a few ideas you can incorporate into your own scrapbook pages, and we hope you’ve been able to draw some inspiration. Leave us a comment and share with us what unique scrapbooking ideas you are incorporating in your own projects!
Have you heard the news? All 13 of the Close To My Heart Cricut® collections, including the new Complete Creativity and some that have been retired for years, are now digitally available for purchase!
Close To My Heart Cricut® Collections:
Complete Creativity (NEW) Art Philosophy
Artbooking
Artfully Sent
Artiste
Artistry
City Sidewalks
Flower Market
Hello AU/NZ
Hello Canada
Hello USA
Season of Joy
You Are Here
There has been some confusion around how to access these collections, so we’ve put together a quick tutorial below to show you how. If you’ve already figured it out on your own, skip to the bottom half of this post to see sample shapes and an artwork example for each collection.
*The following tutorial currently applies to people residing in the United States or Canada, only. (For our Australian and New Zealand crafters, all 13 of these collections are also available through purchasing a digital code from your Consultant which unlocks the shapes in Cricut Design Space™.)
**You will need a Cricut® machine that is Design Space compatible to digitally link your collections to your account. Any of the Explore models or the New Maker will do. If you already own some or all of the Close To My Heart collections in cartridge format, with the right cutting machine, you can link these collections digitally as well. Click here for a short video to learn how.
STEP 1
To start, go to your Close To My Heart Consultant’s website. (If you do not have a Close To My Heart Consultant, visit us here and click on Find a Consultant to find one near you.) Scroll all the way to the bottom of the home page and click on the green Cricut® button.
Clicking on this button will take you to the 13 Close To My Heart Cricut® collections, hosted on the Cricut® website.
STEP 2
Choose the collection you want to purchase and click Add to Cart. Doing so will pull up a side bar with the items you’ve chosen to purchase. When you are ready to check out, you can either click on the small cart icon or the green Checkout button.
STEP 3
If you aren’t signed in to your Cricut® account already, you will be prompted to do so.
Make sure to use your Design Space account information to sign in and then continue the checkout process.
After purchasing any of the CTMH Cricut® collections, they will automatically populate in your Design Space account, along with your other shapes.
STEP 4
To view your CTMH shapes and collections, go to your Design Space account and click on either New Project or My Projects.
Next, click on Images in the side bar, on the left. If you are looking for a specific cartridge or shape, click on Cartridges to view all of your purchased collections or type in the collection’s name or shape number in the search bar, on the top right corner of the page.
ONE FINAL TIP
Each of the shapes in Design Space is given a name and assigned a number. If you click on a shape, for example the first shape of the collection shown above, this information will show up in place of the shape’s image.
If you are looking for one specific shape, and you know its Design Space name or number (including the “#” sign), you can use this information in the search bar to locate it. When we give out project “recipes” (a list of products used), either for our catalogs or on this blog, Cricut® shapes are referenced by the collection from which it comes and its shape number.
The star shape above would then be:
Cricut® Shape: Art Philosophy #M3EA7D
Now that you know how to access all of our Close To My Heart Cricut® collections and shapes, let’s take a quick look at what each of them has to offer!
COMPLETE CREATIVITY
Sample Shapes:
(Not all shapes shown.)
Artwork Example:
As our newest Cricut® collection, we cannot wait for you to get your hands on this one! The Complete Creativity collection is divided up by whole card and scrapbook projects, providing all the shapes you need to create complete cards and scrapbook pages for a variety of themes and occasions!
ART PHILOSOPHY
Sample Shapes: (Not all shapes shown.)
Example Artwork:
Featuring hundreds of basic, versatile shapes and fonts you’ll use every day, many of which coordinate with dozens of our My Acrylix® stamps, the Art Philosophy collection is a must-have for every crafter!
ARTBOOKING
Sample Shapes: (Not all shapes shown.)
Example Artwork:
The Artbooking collection includes accents, borders, titles, overlays, photo mats, and more! You’ll love using these shapes for creating themed mini books to celebrate birthdays, holidays, and everyday life!
ARTFULLY SENT
Sample Shapes:
(Not all shapes shown.)
Example Artwork:
Featuring more than 25 different card themes and 5 different card formats, the Artfully Sent collection has a card for any and all occasions! Card styles include pop-ups, scenes, sentiments, sleeves, and pocket cards.
ARTISTE
Sample Shapes: (Not all shapes shown.)
Example Artwork:
Take your creativity up a notch with the wonderful 3-D projects, party favors, interactive cards, awards, and more, found in the Artiste collection.
ARTISTRY
Sample Shapes: (Not all shapes shown.)
Example Artwork:
The designs in the Artistry collection are staples for any crafter, spanning a wide variety of themes, holidays, and seasons. Get back to the basics with font, banners, layered shapes, borders, backgrounds, and other fun icons that can be used for any and every occasion.
CITY SIDEWALKS
Sample Shapes: (Not all shapes shown.)
Example Artwork:
Dress up your artwork in holiday style with the festive images from this mini Cricut® collection! The City Sidewalks collection comes with 30 complete images, including titles, photo frames, borders, card sentiments, card overlays, and other cheery Christmas designs.
FLOWER MARKET
Sample Shapes:
(Not all shapes shown.)
Example Artwork:
With blooms and blossoms for every season of life, we know the Flower Market collection will really grow on you (if it hasn’t already)! All of the designs feature some type of botanical detail, from flowers and leaves to branches and wreaths. Designed to span an entire year’s worth of themes and occasions, you’ll have beautiful designs and sentiments for holidays, cardmaking, and everyday scrapbooking.
HELLO AU/NZ
Sample Shapes: (Not all shapes shown.)
Example Artwork:
Featuring 20 layered images, the Hello AU/NZ collection has shapes, overlays, and names for Australian and New Zealand states and territories, as well as a local flower, slogan, and coordinating icon. The collection also includes extra images about Australia and New Zealand, including each country’s flag.
HELLO CANADA
Sample Shapes: (Not all shapes shown.)
Example Artwork:
Also featuring 20 layered images, the Hello Canada collection has shapes, overlays, and names for all Canadian provinces and territories, as well as a local flower, slogan, and coordinating icon. The collection also includes extra images about Canada, including the Canadian flag.
HELLO USA
Sample Shapes: (Not all shapes shown.)
Example Artwork:
Featuring 60 layered images, the Hello USA collection has shapes, overlays, and names for all 50 states, as well as a local flower, slogan, and state-specific icon. The collection also includes 10 extra images about the US, including regions and the US flag.
SEASON OF JOY
Sample Shapes: (Not all shapes shown.)
Example Artwork:
Celebrate the most wonderful time of the year with the dynamic cut designs in the Season of Joy collection. This collection features over 45 images and projects, including seasonal icons, titles, and sentiments, as well as a collection of 3-D projects that you can create after a few simple cuts on your Cricut® machine.
YOU ARE HERE
Sample Shapes: (Not all shapes shown.)
Artwork Example:
Whether you’re traveling abroad, taking a road trip, or enjoying a relaxing staycation, the You Are Here collection is sure to have everything you need to document your journey. From outdoor escapades and family reunions to spa retreats and holiday outings, you’ll find shapes and sentiments for every pit stop along the road of life!
We are continuing our review of some of the basic features of Cricut Design Space™ today by taking a closer look at the Lock/Unlock tool. This feature is one of the simplest and most helpful tools in Design Space, and once you learn how to make the most of it, you’ll be able to use it on virtually any project to take your creativity to new heights!
On the card above, we used an assortment of images from the Artbooking, Artistry, and Hello USA Cricut® collections. These collections each lend a different flair to this project, and we love the way they all came together. By branching out and using images from a few different collections, you can create something that’s truly unique and all your own!
As you read along, remember that the steps below show you how to use Design Space on a laptop or desktop computer. If you are using the app on a mobile device, the buttons and tools will be in slightly different places on your screen. Most of these basic features are available on any device.
Lock/Unlock
The Lock/Unlock feature in Design Space allows you to change the height or width of shapes or text. Since most shapes or text blocks won’t automatically fit into your project, Lock/Unlock will be one of your go-to tools as you create your Cricut masterpieces. For this project, we used the Lock/Unlock tool to resize the height or width of each Cricut shape and image to fit seamlessly into this card.
When you want to lock or unlock a shape, image, or block of text, there are two ways to do so—with the button on the toolbar at the top of your screen,
or with the button at the bottom left corner of your shape or image.
Lock/Unlock with Basic Shapes
Basic shapes can be selected from the basic shapes tab in the Design Panel. Although basic shapes are often used as versatile building blocks of great Cricut designs, you’ll probably need to resize or adjust them in order to fit on a project. When you insert a basic shape, it will automatically be locked, meaning, if you try to resize it, the height and width will adjust together. You can make the entire shape bigger or smaller, but you can’t adjust the height or the width individually unless you unlock it. Once you unlock the shape, you can alter just the height or just the width to make sure you have the needed dimensions for your shape. If you want to resize your shape to a specific size, you can enter your measurements into the dimension indicators on the toolbar at the top of your canvas.
For this card, we used the unlock feature to create a 4.25″ x 5.5″ base for our card and a red rectangle layer to go behind the “Celebrate” sentiment. This allowed us to tailor these pieces to fit the card.
Locking/Unlocking More Intricate Shapes
Just like basic shapes, when you insert any shape from any Cricut collection, it will populate on your canvas as a locked image. Resizing one of these shapes with the Lock/Unlock feature is very similar to resizing a basic shape. You’ll just need to pay a little closer attention to any intricate parts of your shape to ensure that it doesn’t get too cramped or warped.
You can see above how the circle medal behind the banner warps into an oval when it is stretched too far horizontally. You’ll want to look out for things like this as you use the Lock/Unlock feature.
In our example card, we resized the pennant banner, the circle medal, and the star accents to fit neatly on the card. By using Lock/Unlock, we were able to work these images into the card design with ease.
Lock/Unlock with Text
Using the Lock/Unlock feature with text is a great way to really expand your creative capacity. 🙂
For our card, we used a Cricut shape to cut the “Celebrate” sentiment. If you choose to include typed-in text rather than an existing shape of text in your project, you can easily resize individual letters using Lock/Unlock. Select the entire text block, ungroup it, and then alter each letter as you choose.
If you’d like to alter the text block as a whole, you can select the entire text block (regroup it if you’ve ungrouped it) and then unlock and resize it as you please.
Put It Together
Follow the steps below to put all of the ideas we discussed today together and make the Celebrate card!
Search for the “Celebrate” sentiment from the Artbooking collection, #M3D5CF, and insert it on your canvas.
Search for the star image from the Artbooking collection, #M3E9BD, and insert it on your canvas. Copy and paste this image to get two stars.
Search for the circle medal image from the Artistry collection, #M4183C8, and insert it on your canvas.
Search for image #M2CCFB18 from the Hello USA collection and insert it on your canvas. (You will only be using the star overlay from this 4th of July image.)
For the card base, insert a square shape from the Shapes tab in the Design Panel. Unlock and resize it to measure 4.25″ x 5.5″.
Tip: Be sure to change the colors of each shape or image as you resize them. This will help you to keep track of which paper you’ll need to use for each cut.
Select a circle shape from the Shapes tab in the Design Panel. Keep the shape locked and resize it to cover one of the small holes in the top of the pennant image. Copy the small circle and cover the other hole. Select the entire image and weld. This should leave you with one solid pennant image piece. Change the color of the pennant to a light blue and resize it to 2.933″ x 5.306″, then center it over your 4.25″ x 5.5″ card base.
Tip: All measurements in this post are W x H.
Select the circle medal shape and resize it to 4″ x 3.52″. Change the color of the banner to blue and the scalloped circle to white. You will need to ungroup this image to do this. Be sure to regroup it when you’re done.
Select the “Celebrate” sentiment and unlock it. Resize it to .75” in height. Then, place it on top of the circle medal piece and center it in the banner. Rotate the “Celebrate” sentiment until it fits within the banner.
Select both, the circle medal and the “Celebrate” sentiment, and group them together. Select the Slice option from the toolbar at the bottom of the Layers Panel.
Select a square shape from the Shapes tab in the Design Panel. Resize it to 2.806″ x 1.215″ and change its color to a dark red. This piece will form the background for the “Celebrate” sentiment.
Select the circle medal and place it over the red layer square you just created. Make sure the red piece is completely covered by the medal. Group this entire image together and center it over the blue pennant.
Ungroup the “Happy 4th” image and delete everything except the star base and overlay. Change the color of these pieces to yellow.
Select Make It in the top right corner and cut your project pieces.
Assemble your card and embellish with watercolor paint and sequins!
We hope you enjoyed this brief overview of the Lock/Unlock tool. Be sure to check out our next Design Space post, where we’ll explore more applications of the Attach feature! In the comments below make sure to let us know if you have any Design Space questions or if there are any topics you’d like us to cover in the future.
Can you believe summer is already coming to a close? Oh how time flies when you’re having fun! Though it may be hard to wave farewell to days lounging by the pool, visiting family, and traveling to beautiful destinations, you can keep those summertime memories alive and well by creating a mini album. Summertime doesn’t have to end!
We created this camping-themed album with two of our exclusive Cricut® collections: Artbooking and You Are Here.
The Artbooking collection includes a variety of tabbed, hole-punched pages designed especially for creating mini albums like this one! To decorate those pages, we turned to the You Are Here collection, which is our newest Cricut® collection. This collection includes designs to help you document your adventures both near and far away from home. Combine these two collections together, and you’ve got everything you need to create any number of mini summertime adventure albums!
You’ll see lots of the Jack paper packet in our mini album. With its tree, woodgrain, and flannel-inspired plaid patterns, these papers are perfect for documenting your outdoor adventures. Just remember, it’s only available until the end of the month while supplies last, so grab yours while you can!
If these pages inspire you to make an album of your own, feel free to refer to the recipe at the bottom of this post to see which products we used, as well as more details about the Cricut® cuts.
What are your favorite memories from this summer? Tell us in the comments below!
You’ve set some great goals for the new year, and you’re ready to get to work (especially after reading our tips for goal-setting success)! What better way to keep track of your progress and motivate yourself along the way than to create a cute mini goal book? With the help of the Cricut® Artbooking collection and the La Vie En Rose paper packet, you can create a trendy mini book like this:
Look how fun! We got really creative with this project, starting with the cover: Those colorful “2016” numbers were cut from some Picture My Life™ cards, while the bookmark flags come from the La Vie En Rose Complements. But that’s just the beginning—let’s take a peek inside!
We’ll start the grand tour with this motivation pocket. It’s full of stamped cards with encouraging reminders for the day. Bright watercolors are the perfect way to add extra excitement and energy to these motivational sayings. Watercolors also come into play on the next page, where each goal fits into a category, and each category has its own color. Has organization ever been so cute?
Here’s another card from Picture My Life Through the Year! It’s already so decorative that just a couple embellishments are enough to complete the page. Charts are great for keeping track of your goals, so we created a pie chart with a twist. It coordinates with the goals on the previous page, and you can fill in the chart with watercolors as you complete your goals, proving that keeping your goals can be fun and creative!
Finally, check out these lists—beautiful and inspirational! Isn’t a reminder of what your goals are all about a perfect ending for this book? It’s a great reminder about why goal setting is really important. On the surface, goals seem to be all about what we do, but they are actually about discovering who we are and the inner strength we have.
What’s especially neat is that this applies to creating art with paper. On the surface, you’re stamping, designing, and arranging, but what you’re actually doing is learning more about yourself as you discover your own creative potential. Pretty neat, right?
We hope you enjoy fulfilling your goals as much as you enjoy creating a fun mini book like this one to track them!
Recipe
Mini Goal Book
B1482 My Acryix® My Story, E1031 My Acrylix® Dated, E1033 My Acrylix® Inked Alphabet, D1661 My Acrylix® Crazy Good, B1484 My Acrylix® Jennifer’s Hand, X7201B La Vie En Rose Paper Packet, Z3177 Picture My Life™ Through The Year Scrapbooking Program, 1385 White Daisy Cardstock, 1386 Black Cardstock, X5770 Glacier Cardstock, X5930 Slate Cardstock, Z1375 Kraft Cardstock, Z3146 Watercolor Paper, Z3128 Paper Fundamentals Basics, 44751 Archival Black Exclusive Inks™ Stamp Pad, Z2193 Cotton Candy Exclusive Inks™ Stamp Pad, Z2641 Glacier Exclusive Inks™ Stamp Pad, X7201C La Vie En Rose Complements, Z3095 Whisper Thick Twine, Z3132 Watercolor Paints, Z2013 Sequins Silver Assortment, Z3169 Cricut® Artbooking Collection, Thread
Cricut® Shapes: Artbooking
7″ Photo Mat 1 <3> (p. 40)
7″ Photo Mat 2 <q> (p. 48)
7″ Shift+Photo Mat 1 <W> (p. 49)
6 ¾” Photo Mat 1 <e> (p. 50)
7″ Photo Mat 1 <r> (p. 51)
4 ½” Photo Mat 1 <u> (p. 54)
7 ¼” Shift+Photo Mat 1 <O> (p. 56)
All these products are available through one of our Independent Consultants. To find a Consultant near you, visit closetomyheart.com and click on “Find a Consultant” in the top right corner of the page.
