SSS Inlaid die cutting landscape

I recently picked up the Layered Hills dies from Simon Says Stamp.  I love dies that give you lots of options and possibilities, and these definitely fit the bill.

I wanted to create a very clean and simple, cardstock only card with the dies, but I also wanted each of the pieces to be inlaid.

This seems tricky, but just requires a little bit of planning ahead, and in this case, since I was creating a landscape, it's pretty straightforward because the pieces are inlaid top to bottom as the landscape moves forward.

I started by trimming all of my cardstock pieces to 4 1/4" wide.  Since I knew that I was going to trim my finished panel down to 4", this gave me a little play so I didn't have to be exact when inlaying my pieces. 

The large/small hill edge piece was die cut from a panel of white cardstock as well as the dark green.  Then I used some scrap printing paper as a base, covering it with adhesive, and adhering both of the pieces to it.  

Next, the medium hill shape was die cut from medium green cardstock.  This was then placed onto the background piece and die cut.  Using another piece of printer paper covered with adhesive as a base, the hill was inlaid into the background.  

This process was repeated for the smaller hill which also completed the top portion of the panel.  

I then (again using some printer paper to connect the pieces) cut a piece of dark teal cardstock for the water and added to the bottom of the background.

Using the shallow wavy border die, I cut the bottom of that cardstock piece off.  Using that same wavy border, I die cut the top of a piece of lighter teal cardstock.  Again, I used printer paper to bring the pieces together.  This was repeated several more times to complete the water portion of the card.

To finish off my panel, I die cut the sun from the top white portion of the card (this definitely could have been done off the bat), and inlaid a colored sun.

Finally, I used a 4" x 5 1/4" die to cut out the completed panel piece.

The sentiment is from Simon Says Stamp's Just Miss You set (FYI, this sentiment set is actually on sale right now, $9.99 down from $24.99.

This is a favorite technique of mine, and if you're a more visual learner and need a video, I actually taught this technique in my Craftsy class.  

Hope your week is going well!

*This post contains affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp and Craftsy