This mini was made with my Cricut Expression and a regular cutting blade. I used a thin cardboard for the base of the shapes. I put my blade length on 4, pressure max, and multi cut 2. I've never had any problem cutting chipboard (or food boxes) with this setting.
I used papers from the DCWV Grade School stack. I like to stick to one stack for these sorts of projects because while the papers can be greatly different, they all fit together somehow. Each shape had a paper cover the front, which matted the photo and a piece cut using the flip setting for the backside of the shape.
I then chalked the edges in black and sealed them with Glossy Accents and added a sprinkle of white/clear glitter for fun.
If the shape had an available place, I put the picture there, if not, I tried to make it fit with the shape as much as possible. Here is my daughter's page, which was the most difficult, getting the star shape to work with a 4x6 photo.
The last shape was a notebook page and served as a place for me to write our thank you note.
The shapes I used were: Crayon 2 - Locker Talk - 6" Pencil - My Community - 3" Puzzle piece - My Community - 5" Star - Doodlecharms - 6" Glue - Locker Talk - 6" Backpack - Doodlecharms - 6" Apple - Doodlecharms - 6" Notebook page - Locker Talk - 6" I hope you have enjoyed my mini and if you have any questions, please ask in the comments and I will try my best to answer!