From photos to journaling and everything in between, it’s no secret that at Close To My Heart we love and value all things to do with memory keeping. One approach that is especially popular this type of year is the photo-a-day method, where you take a photo every day based on a specific prompt for that day. With all of the magical moments that inevitably happen around the holidays, December is a perfect time to take on this style!
To help you fully embrace this memory keeping method, we’ve had a beautiful 6″ x 8″ pocket-scrapbooking album designed especially for the upcoming season. With room for photos and journaling on every page, The Days of December album is specifically designed to capture each day of the month, from the first through the thirty-first.
Our goal with this album is to take the work out of memory keeping so that you are completely prepared to enjoy the memory making part of the season. In addition to providing instructions to create the entire album (check out all of the completed layouts here), we thought we could help you fill its pages as well! Here are 31 prompts we’ve come up with to inspire your journaling and photography this December.
Use these prompts in order, one per day, or switch them up to make the list work for you! Whatever you do, enjoy the moments, make your memories, and then look back on them in a beautiful album time and time again.
It’s not too early to begin planning for the holidays! To get your Christmas season off to a delightful start, we’ve created an advent calendar papercrafting project using images from our new Cricut® collection, Season of Joy.Make an advent calendar just like this one for your home, office, or wherever your crafting takes you, using this advent calendar workshop guide and our Cricut Design Space™ project files included right in the instructions! In this guide, we walk you through each step of the process to make sure you successfully complete this beautiful project just in time for the holidays.
First, you cut all of the pieces on your Cricut® machine using the Design Space project files provided. Then, you assemble the outer and inner boxes. This part is pretty repetitive with lots of folding and gluing for all 25 outer boxes and 25 inner boxes. That means during this step you can break out some Christmas music or a favorite holiday movie to have in the background as you work. Next, you stamp the paper embellishments using the My Acrylix® Snug Backgrounds stamp set, for a little extra color and texture. Then, attach your paper embellishments to each box. Finish off the project with some clear sparkles and a New England Ivy burlap ribbon bow on top. And there you have it! A calendar counting down to one of the most celebrated times of the year, measuring 16½” tall (not including the bow) with a 14″ wide base.
There are a few places where you will need to pay closer attention, especially when you’re using Design Space to cut and score your paper and cardstock. These tips are noted in the instructions, but we wanted to point them out again so you can keep them in mind as you’re creating your calendar.
We’ve made one project file to cut the outer boxes in New England Ivy cardsock. Design Space will display an alert that the project is larger than 11.5″ in height and requires a larger mat, like you see below. Click “OK” and cut the outer boxes using the cardstock on your 12″ x 12″ mat. It will cut close to the edges of your paper, but this way you only use 12 sheets of cardstock with two boxes on each sheet.
You might wonder why the Outer Boxes project file only cuts 24 boxes. It is not a mistake! You will still end up cutting 25 outer boxes, promise. The 25th box, however, is cut from the Advent Calendar – Boxes and Embellishments (New England Ivy) project file. This way just saves you some paper. 🙂
There are individual project files to cut the paper embellishments for the box fronts and the last few inner boxes. They look something like this one below that uses the Candy Apple cardstock. Notice that some of the numbers are backwards. This lets you cut with the light side of the cardstock facing up, and then you flip the numbers over to use the dark side of the cardstock on the box fronts.
Cut all your paper, put everything together, and add some embellishments, and you’ll have a lovely home décor piece to accent your holiday. After you’ve finished your own advent calendar, all you need to do is fill each box with a special treat for every day leading up to Christmas. There are many, many ways you can fill the boxes. Here are just a few ideas:
Candy or chocolate (of-course!)
Activity ideas (like going to see Christmas lights, making hot chocolate, or reading a Christmas book)
Christmas ornaments
Little girl “pretties” (hair accessories, nail polish, lip balm)
Small toys (Lego® figures, cars, marbles)
Ideas for random acts of kindness
Scripture verses
So, what do you think? Are you ready to make your own advent calendar? To keep things easy, we put together a bundle of all the paper and cardstock you will need to cut this project (click here). You will also need a few additional items, including the Cricut® Season of Joy collection and the My Acrylix® Snug Backgrounds stamp set. For a complete list of additional required and optional products needed, as well as step-by-step instructions, make sure you download or print the Advent Calendar Workshop guide, here.
Do you know how you will be filling your advent calendar this year? Let’s share ideas in the comments below!
Were any of you able to catch our Facebook live yesterday? If you did, you know that it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around these parts. Yep, you heard right! For the month of October we have an impressive set of holiday shaker cards for you to make and send to all of your favorite people this coming season! The best part—they are so easy to make that you can probably assemble all 12 that come in one kit in less than an hour!
These bright and festive Holiday Sparkle cards are part of our Cut Above® program, which means you get everything you need to assemble them in one convenient kit: printed card bases, die-cuts, stickers, loose sequins, window foam and acetate, envelopes, and easy-to-follow instructions—absolutely no cutting required! The detailed paper accents that we all love for our handmade cards are included right in your kit!
A shaker card, for those new to the idea, is a card that has a window compartment built into it that holds loose pieces, adding a little extra whimsy to the card design and a lot of fun for the recipient!
So how do the Holiday Sparkle cards come together? Take a look at the steps below to see just how easy it truly is to assemble these festive cards with their glistening windows!
The very first thing you’re going to do is lay one of the printed card bases flat on your working space. Do not fold the card base in half just yet. This will give you a flat surface to work with, which is especially helpful later when you’re adding the loose sequins.
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Next, carefully remove the outer foam ring from one of the window foam circles and attach it to your card front, on top of the printed circle.
Keeping your card base flat, add some of the loose sequins inside the circle frame you just created.
If you haven’t done so already, peel off the protective layer from the top of the foam tape ring to expose the adhesive.
Remove the protective film from one of the window acetate circles and lay it on top of the foam tape ring.
The last step in assembling the shaker window is to hide the foam frame by layering a faux-stitched circle sticker on top of it.
Now that your window is complete, all that is left is to embellish the card front as well as the envelopes using the included die-cuts, stickers, and any leftover sequins.
You’ll notice that we give you a solid circle of foam tape, not just the outer ring to use in the making of the window. The inside pieces are purposefully included, and pre-cut for your convenience. Use these pieces to attach some of your embellishments for even more dimension.
With all of the time you’re saving using the Holiday Sparkle Cut Above® kit for your holiday cards this year, you’ll have more time to spend on some of your other holiday projects! But you better act fast! These kits and its supporting stamp set (Love with All the Trimmings) are only available until the end of the month, while supplies last. We’ve got a feeling that they are going to be flying off the shelf, so make sure to get yourself at least one kit while you still can!
Your loved ones will surely be impressed when they receive a Holiday Sparkle card and find out that it is handmade! They don’t have to know how easily it comes together—that can be our little secret!
It’s an exciting time of year, folks! As promised, our Holiday Expressions idea book catalog was released just a few days ago and it is filled to the brim with new, cutting edge tools and products to add to your holiday and non-holiday crafting arsenal. We’ve gathered a few of our favorites for you below, but there just isn’t enough room to share “all the things,” so make sure to flip through the whole catalog so you don’t miss anything! 🙂
Love of Color
Never second-guess your color choices again with this new, inspirational color guide! Love of Color brings the exclusive Close To My Heart color palette to life with breathtaking artwork that illustrates how to create perfectly balanced color combinations. Organized by color, each spread focuses on an exclusive color shown in three different color schemes.
Pigment Pads
We now have pigment ink options available in our patented Exclusive Inks™ stamp pads! This acid-free, fade-resistant pigment ink dries quickly and permanently on most papers and porous surfaces after heat-setting. Available in our full-size ink pads, the new pigment pads feature raised pads that are approximately 3¾” x 2½”—larger than average and easier to use. Available in Candy Apple, Pixie, Sapphire, Clover, Espresso, Black, and White Daisy.
We loooove the effects created by our clear and gold shimmer brushes so much that we now have them in several additional colors—Sugarplum, red, black, and Mint. Take a look at the video below to see them in action!
Shaker Window Kits
Assembling a shaker window has never been easier! With these trusty tools, you are sure to get hooked on this throw-back trend!
Prepare to celebrate the most wonderful time of the year with the dynamic shape designs in the new Season of Joy collection!
This collection features over 45 images and projects, including several 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.
Holiday Kitchen
Because food plays such an important role in so many of our favorite holiday traditions, we couldn’t help but make another Cut Above® recipe kit—this time with some holiday flair! The Holiday Kitchen Cut Above® recipe kit includes everything you need to get all those recipes in one place together with the stories and memories that make them so special!
All Things Sugarplum
There’s a new kid in town and it goes by the name Sugarplum—our 2018 Color of the Year! This exclusive shade will only be available for a limited time, so make sure you get it in all of its available forms: stamp pad, pigment pad, re-inker, cardstock, glitter paper, shimmer brush, and more!
Beautiful Soul
We are on a mission to change the lives of as many children as possible by restoring something that no child should be without—their smile.
In recent years, Close To My Heart has annually dedicated the proceeds of one stamp set to the efforts of Operation Smile™, a non-profit organization that provides safe surgeries to repair cleft left lips and palates in children around the world. Starting with our new Holiday Expressions catalog, we are now dedicating one stamp set per catalog—that means three stamp sets a year—to this very worthy cause.
Purchase this catalog’s Operation Smile™ stamp set, My Acrylix® Beautiful Soul, encourage others to do so, or simply get on our site and make a straight donation to Operation Smile™.
So what do you think of our 2018 Holiday Expressions line up? Which products are you just dying to get your hands on? Let us know in the comments below!
Phew! You can take a deep breath now—Christmas is over and you can calmly go about your business getting back to a “normal” routine. There are decorations to be put away, a tree to take down, presents to find places for, goodies and leftovers galore to eat your way through… but all in its own time.
One item that perplexes many is the stack of Christmas cards that you’ve received over the past few weeks (and which will probably keep trickling in over the next few weeks, too!). You’ve probably got a great system for displaying them when they come in, but now that Christmas is over what is to become of them?
We shudder at the thought of throwing away those cute photos and heartfelt greetings from loved ones and bygone friends, but the alternative of shoveling the stack into a box and shoving it onto an obscure and cluttered shelf under the stairs seems scarcely better. Luckily we have some great ideas to help you find a more fitting home for these keepsakes.
Flip Flaps™ Memory Protectors™ to the rescue! This Christmas cards 2017 layout gives you a beautiful place to preserve those photos. The layout itself uses neutral colors and simple design elements in order to give visual preference to the photos, which likely do not all conform to a unified color scheme. Cards that are larger than 4″ x 6″ can be trimmed to fit into the Flip Flaps, or you can even just trim out a part of the photo and add it to the page, discarding the rest of the card.
Cards that do not include family photos can benefit from similar treatment, incorporated as design elements into a layout like this one. By using the Pocket Plus™ Memory Protectors, you can add these cards to a layout so that the designed card front looks like any other design element, but the card can still be pulled out and read for the message inside.
Another project that works well for pulling together different elements is a mini-album. Once again, you can include entire cards, trim them to fit, or cut out elements you’d like to preserve.
Christmas cards come in all shapes and sizes, and so do mini albums! Here’s another album idea that takes a vertical approach by binding all the cards together with a piece of ribbon threaded through punched holes in each of the pages.
Use this idea to incorporate all kinds of cards, from photo cards, to traditional, folding cards and notes, which can be tucked into basic pockets in your album. As the creator of your album, you can make it to fit the cards that you want to keep.
When your friends and family members go to the trouble of sending you a Christmas card, that is an act of caring that deserves better treatment than to be stuck on a fridge or a board for a month and then discarded! Now that we’ve given you some ideas of what to do with them, you have an alternative that will keep their warm holiday wishes around all year—and isn’t that what we hope will happen every Christmas?
What a wonderful time of year! I love the opportunity to celebrate the birth and life of our Savior with the world, and with each of you! I can say without a doubt that I have been blessed immensely this year to count you among my friends.
My beautiful grandchildren are a constant reminder to me of how simple and carefree life can be when we focus on the good things in life. Christmas through the eyes of a child is especially magical. There is so much anticipation, hope, and unconditional love in every moment. And if you’re fortunate enough, you may catch a glimpse of it through a quick twinkle in their eyes.
My hope for each of us both during this special season and any time throughout the year is to be more like children. Love unconditionally, forgive easily and often, and focus on all of the good—and there is so much good—in this world.
I love my grandkids with all of my heart for the innocent lessons they teach me on a regular basis. And, I love all of you. Thank you for being so much of the good that is in my life.
May your lives be merry and bright and full of unconditional love this Christmas!
We know what you’re thinking, with less than a week away from Christmas there’s no way we can convince you to start any more paper projects until well into January. But, we sure want to try! 😀
Children love making things with their hands. Creativity is an innate part of childhood. And, you love creating and making things, too—so why not share this passion and create something fun and festive together to add to your celebrations.
We came up with an idea to help you use up some of your paper stash while making valuable memories with the adorable little ones in your life.
A simple paper chain like this is a cinch to put together, making it the perfect project for this busiest of seasons. It’s also a great project for involving younger crafters, and keeping those tiny hands busy! Use whatever fun patterns and colors you or your co-crafters like, and display the finished product as a garland.
Make your garland any size and length you like, to fit your style and space. For ours, we made each link from 2″ x 9″ strips of paper. At first we used only an adhesive runner to keep the pieces together but as we started working with the thicker glitter papers, we realized that those pieces would need something extra if they were going to be links in our chain. So, we glued them first then added mini staples to make sure they stayed in place.
Mini staples, while securing the elements of your project, make for fun accents, too. We ended up adding extra staples to pieces that didn’t need them simply for the look.
The best part about crafting with children is not the project you are working on, but the moments you share with each other. That togetherness is especially wonderful during this time of year. Share your passion for creativity with the little hands in your life and turn that time into memories worth preserving.
The holidays are one of the busiest times of the year. Between the shopping, the parties, and the baking, it can feel impossible to find time for memory keeping! Pocket scrapbooking is a convenient solution for staying ahead during the season while still creating beautiful pages for your holiday album.
With pocket scrapbooking, you can use Picture My Life™ cards and simple embellishments to quickly create your layouts. On the layout above, we added a little gold shimmer trim and a few gold glitter gems to give it some extra sparkle. A good rule of thumb with pocket scrapbooking is to try to have an equal number of photos and cards on your layout. This helps each page look balanced and complete.
Because of the way pocket scrapbooking works, you can make some of your Christmas layouts ahead of time, before your photos are even taken! We know, it might sound crazy, but with pocket scrapbooking it makes perfect sense! Line up your cards the way you like them and leave the photo pockets empty—or, if it helps to see where to put your photos as you create, use cardstock as a photo placeholder.
If you really like the idea of planning ahead, take it to the next level! Instead of just leaving blanks for the photos you will take, use sticky notes to add short reminders about what kind of photos you want to take to add to the layouts. That way you can have a plan for your scrapbook, have the pages ready to go, but then wait to print your photos after the holiday season when life is a little less hectic. Then, all you have to do is slip those printed photos into your Memory Protectors™.
Take the same approach with your journaling. You’ll notice that none of these layouts have the journaling yet. If you’re crunched for time, jot down some of the important parts on a sticky note. What do you like about your holiday traditions? What food did you eat? What is special about that moment? You don’t have to write down the entire story, just highlights to jog your memory. That will make it easier to add words to a journaling pocket card when you have time to come back to it.
The best part of this is that if you make your pocket scrapbook layouts ahead of time and then your photos don’t fit on your pages, you can easily adjust your design! That’s one of the things we love about this scrapbooking format: It’s easy to mix, match, and move photos and pocket cards to fit your story, even as it happens!
And, if you need some extra room for all of those photos you will be taking, simply add Pocket Plus™ Memory Protectors™. With Pocket Plus you get that extra space for photos and journaling without having to add an entire layout. It also adds a fun, interactive element to your pages.
As you celebrate this season, use the ideas we shared today to stay ahead of holiday memories, and don’t forget to keep these pocket scrapbooking tips in mind for any time life gets busy. Memory-making never stops. Preserve those memories as they happen with pocket scrapbooking.
We can think of no better way to dress up a gift than with a personalized handmade tag, so we came up with a quick list of ideas to help up your tag-making game this season!
1. Cricut® Shapes
Select a few of your favorite shapes and let your Cricut® machine do the rest! If you need to make a large number of gift tags, using a Cricut® shape is an easy way to get it done.
2. Pocket Cards
If you have extra pocket cards, try trimming them into a gift tag. Your pocket cards can become the base paper or even the sentiment!
3. Cut Above® Tag Kit
This kit was designed for tag making! Pair these tags with different ribbons, embellishments, and sentiments to change their original look, and voila! You have beautifully unique tags for the beautifully unique people receiving them.
4. Complements
Make use of any extra complements you have by sticking them on gift tags!
5. Stamping on Scraps
We all have scraps of paper lying around from bigger projects we’ve worked on in preparation for the holidays. Instead of throwing it away (or hoarding it! J) turn your scraps into little gift tags with some fun stamps and ribbons!
Who knew that so much cuteness could fit into such small pieces of paper! Make your gift giving that much more special this season with some personalized handmade tags!
To help you fully embrace this memory keeping method, we’ve had a beautiful 6″ x 8″ pocket-scrapbooking album designed especially for the upcoming season. With room for photos and journaling on every page, The Days of December album is specifically designed to capture each day of the month, from the first through the thirty-first.
Make an advent calendar just like this one for your home, office, or wherever your crafting takes you, using this 
