Technique: Inlaid & Lifted Die Cut Cards - Part 1

Hard to believe it is already Friday again and I almost forgot about my blog LOL time flies when you have fun right? I don't know where all of you live, but here in Michigan we have for the past few days 90F and more. Yes, it is the first day of fall and out air conditioner is running! I guess around midweek next week we will be getting back to normal, we will see.

So in any event, here is the first of two posts about my September Blog Hop projects. Inlaid and lifted was the theme and the first thing I had to do was find some dies that would work with this technique. Well, you can pretty much use any dies you have. Inlaid means you place the die cut out back into the paper you cut it from or you fill back in all these little pieces like a puzzle. Lifted on the other hand is when you cut multiple pieces of one kind and adhere them together.


I took two of my big flower dies from Elizabeth Designs and cut them out of white cardstock. I did adhere about three of the cutouts on top of each other just to make them pop up more. I used a white card base measuring 4 1/4"x 5 1/2". I cut a piece of white cardstock measuring 4 1/4x5 1/2 and used my Lawn Fawn dies to cut out the rectangular you see on the left. I wanted to keep the main part white so I decided to color the cut out rectangle with watercolor. Really simple, just three colors and a wide brush.

I also colored the medium and small flower from the set with the same colors. Once dry I adhered the white cardstock to my base and placed the colored part back in the opening. The big flower is kept white. I adhered it inside my colored rectangular and cut the end of.
Before I added the other flowers I stamped my phrase in black ink. Now I placed the two flowers on the other side of the card. All flowers used for this card are each three layers of die-cuts adhered together. 

Here is the second example of my "flower" projects. This time I used the dandelion die from Elisabeth Designs, my Lawn Fawn rectangle die and a scalloped circle die. I covered my card base with a piece of colored cardstock measuring 4 1/4"x5 1/2". Next I cut the rectangle from white cardstock and in the second run I cut out the scalloped circle. I then placed my dandelion die on the scalloped circle and run it through the machine one more time. Again, using watercolor paints, I colored in the scalloped circle, the smaller flower and the stem part of the big flower that is hanging over the scalloped edge.

I adhered the white rectangular piece to my card base, but instead of in the center I moved it to the upper left corner so I had about 1/2" on the right side and bottom of the colored paper showing. The pieces that are hanging over were cut of with scissors. 

Next I placed the colored scallop circle back inside the cut out. The dandelions are assembled from three die cuts adhered together, so they are a little thicker. This makes it easy to fit the flower back into the circle. I didn't bother to cut the stem out as well because it fit just fine on top of the card. Stamp your phrase and add the smaller flower before you place the ribbon bow on top.

 I hope you will give this technique a try. Go through your stack of dies and see what would work best. Next Friday I will show you two more examples. This time I used my Penny Black lanterns which are super for this technique.....check back and let me know how your projects turned out .

Thank you for joining me today and see you soon here