Piercing Plates and Wittle Weavers

This is my first post for the month of February for Cheery Lynn Designs and with that said (being that it is now officially February), I'm hopeful that spring is just around the corner (just six tiny weeks away according to that little groundhog at any rate.) In honor of the coming spring, I pulled out some pink cardstock to create my card as well as some patterned paper by Pink Paislee (the Sweetness Collection) and ..... I used the new Piercing Plates that are now available in the Cheery Lynn Design stores right here. 

Before I go further (or show you the card) however, I want to tell you that this is the first card that I made using the new plates and my first attempt was to use it for the obvious (to me anyhow) as a kind of embossing plate to give my cardstock texture. BUT... these plates have SO MANY more uses and if I were a bettin' woman, I'd say you are going to be seeing a lot of creative ideas from our Design Team as we all start working with the Piercing and Stitching plates more often.

Besides using one of the new Piercing Plates (I actually used the Large Square), I also turned to some of my favorite Cheery Lynn Designs dies from the XL Stackers Nesting Dies "French Flair" , the Little Stackers Nesting Dies "French Flair"  and  the Dimensional Butterfly Bundles. Now I've told you before how much I love the dimensional butterfly dies (I mean look at that detail!)... but just for fun I first ran my paper through my Big Shot using the Piercing Plates and then cut/embossed with the butterfly die. I loved the extra effect this created on the butterflies... just imagine the "life" it will bring to those flat die cuts as well!

Another new die that had its' debut at CHA in California last weekend, in my opinion TOTALLY ROCKS...and that's the Wittle Weavers (Wittle Wickers too!).  The DAY that these arrived in my mail box I knew exactly what I wanted to try with them... a Valentine's card.

The Wittle Weavers and Wittle Wickers cut and emboss strips of cardstock. I actually worked with the Wittle Weaver plate for this project which cuts the strips of paper to 1/2 inch. When you run them through your die cut machine, they are still attached together at one end and make it easy to cut two sheets of cardstock (one at a time) and then weave them together to create a basket weave (gorgeous)... but I changed it up a bit and instead cut the end off that held them together and then inked up the edges of each one of the strips of paper. Then I adhered them onto the front of the card diagnonally to create this card base.

On the above close-up you can see the embossing that occurs (along with the cutting). The fine lines it creates in the paper are gorgeous and makes it look just like basket weaving material! So yummy.  I loved how the card front looked so much that I didn't want to cover it up with too many extras so I simply cut an image/sentiment label from the Little Stackers Nesting Dies "French Flair" I added my image by stamping it with embossing ink and embossing with American Crafts Zing! in pink. I then stamped the sentiment, added some Imaginisce Hot Rocks and popped it up on the front of the card with some Pop Dots.  A bow with another Hot Rock finished off the pretty card.   

Thanks so much for stopping by Cheery Lynn Designs today, and I hope you are (by now) making it a habit to not miss a single day... because we have new posts with new designs featured by all of our Designers each and every day of the week.... now how cool is that?! I know I can't wait to see what the other Designers do with all the new plates and dies showcased at CHA in California!