Creativity close to scrapbooker's heart

Jeanette Lynton loves art and creativity.

As a young girl, the founder and chief executive officer of Pleasant Grove-based Close to My Heart spent hours drawing and working on her penmanship and kept numerous scrapbooks decorated with her own designs.

But Lynton also has the hard-nosed business sense and persistence that have taken CTMH to the heights of the scrapbooking and rubber-stamping industry.

From its beginning as D.O.T.S. (Dozens of Terrific Stamps), CTMH has been a product of Lynton's designs, dreams and personality. Lynton has said that her goal was, first of all, to create a business that would allow her to support her family and pass on a prosperous living to them.

Lynton also sought to create opportunities for women to use their talents, both as direct distributors of CTMH stamps and scrapbook supplies and as the company's customers.

Today, CTMH employs almost 200 people and works hard to stay at the forefront of the industry.

The company rolls out new products monthly and shows customers how to use them through such products as Lynton's planned series of 10 "cookbooks" for scrapbooking, the first of which, "Cherish," was recently published.