Friday, January 22, 2010

The coolest thing since sliced (gluten free) bread!


Lori's note: This card is for a card challenge I just discovered HERE at Card Patterns, but there's a lot of babble before the card. Feel free to skip over the babbling!

Are you familiar with the saying, "The greatest thing since sliced bread?" When we lived in Africa that took on a new meaning for me, a very literal meaning. The first loaf I saw from a store in Kinshasa, Zaire (now Dem. Rep. of the Congo) had very irregular slices. Some were a normal thickness, then others were about an inch thick. I learned that likely the factory's cutter had lost blades & they couldn't afford new ones. Once we were in Lodja (middle of Zaire), any bread was homemade, so it was slice as you go. I suspect that when we went to Nairobi they had sliced bread. I do know that coming home to the USA caused serious reverse culture shock. Do you know that there are ENTIRE AISLES of sliced bread in the USA? Oh, you probably do. LOL!

Now that I am on a gluten free diet, life is different. I make most my bread, when I do have bread. It isn't an every day or sometimes even every week occurrence. They DO make sliced gluten free bread. It's in the freezer section and what I've tried (at $6.00 or so a loaf) was nothing to write home about. All this to say when I say something is cooler than sliced gluten free bread---I MEAN IT!

This really does have a point, and in fact has to do with cutting things precisely, just like bread. I recently saw a technique that made me want to print out every vintage image I could find and try it. Sherry Cheever, aka Bad Sherry on SCS, created this amazing card with one of the not yet released die sets from Spellbinders. I'll let you go take a peek at her blog & come back. Just click HERE. WOW! Did you see that? Then a few days later, she decided to make the inverse, or negative of that. Spellbinders Blog has an example of that with some info HERE.

If you're like me, you are ready to go buy a bustle, parasol, and a time machine to live in the days of these images. Though we might have to slice our own bread. Since I can't do that, I decided to try the technique. Here is my first card for this technique:

I used the sketch at Card Patterns week 47 at the top of this blog post.

Here are some different angles so you can see the layers.

I was thinking last night (I had too much caffeine & could not sleep) that this could be done with punches if you don't have any nesting dies. Or, you could simply cut squares or rectangles in layers. If you have the Creative Memories Cutting system, you could do layers with that. Be aware that when you go from one size circle to the next the differences in size aren't always the same as those between the different colored cutters (if you have the CM system I hope that makes sense).

Do you want some FREE images? I searched online & found two that had a lot of images:
http://hubpages.com/hub/vintage-flowers
http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/

Do you see why I was so excited? I almost jumped up & down for joy. Then I thought better of it & remembered I read somewhere that jumping isn't good if you have fibromyalgia. That's my excuse anyway!

I have so many more cards I want to make, but I have purses I NEED to make, so I must use some self control and get busy with those.

Thanks for traveling with me to a time long ago. Wasn't it fun to feel like Jane Seymour in Somewhere in Time for a few minutes? LOL!

6 comments:

Cassie said...

Very neat idea, Lori! Thanks for sharing the idea and sites ;D

Sherry Cheever said...

Lovely card and a beautiful image! I also follow a gluten/wheat free diet and I have to tell you that I really do like the brown rice bread in the freezer section. I warm it up in the toaster and add either butter or peanut butter. Not too good other than that. Oh it does make great grilled cheese sandwiches!

dstandard said...

Beautiful card and thanks for those links!

Anonymous said...

Awesome!

Traci M said...

Lori, I had seen Sherry Cheever's online tutorial on the Spellbinder's site...need to go back there sometime when I am ready to try one of these.
This is so pretty, I love vintage, and agree it would be fun to travel back in time.
The bustle...not so sure!
Thanks for the beautiful birthday card, the cracked glass technique turned out great!! I love it!
Thanks for the link to the images, maybe I can try that this weekend!

peggysue said...

I might not want to buy or wear a bustle . . . sounds too much like a girdle to me and I'm not imprisoning myself in one of those! But this is a very pretty card!