Partial Die Cutting

In the current issue of Quick Cards Made Easy there is an article on double partial die cutting by Jules of Always With a Heart.  I've seen partial die cutting but the double bit seems to be a step up from what we are used to and the article gives very clear instructions, well illustrated with examples.  I thought I'd like to try this and have been thinking over what dies I have which might work and I've come up with something and I will attempt to describe the steps which I must say took quite a bit of thought to get it all to 'happen' in the right order. WARNING - this is turning into a long post!!

Started with a piece of cream card 5 1/2" square and drew a light pencil line where I wanted the picket fence to be, ran it through the die cutting machine with the part I didn't want to cut 'hanging over the edge of the cutting plates (Jules describes this so well in her tutorial).

The next stage was to do the same thing with a circle die to make a frame around the fence, cutting carefully along the pencil line between the edges of the circle and the bottom of the fence.  So far so good but I'd not really decided what was coming next except that I thought a 'scene' behind the aperture would be good so I brushed some blue and green ink for sky and ground, then stamped some grass onto a piece of white card.

This all looked a bit bare so a tree and foliage were stamped onto the background and a line of stamped flowers which actually don't show much now the card is complete - heigh ho!!

Having popped the scene behind the window I set about making a bit of foreground by partial die cutting a smaller picket fence on the top of a strip of kraft card; also die cut a strip of foliage with flowers and a tree which I've turned into a shrub.  Two die cut black cats more or less dealt with the scene and foreground.  I then cut a fancy border in cream card, adding a printed sentiment. Some tiny pink flowers were added - these are the 'waste' from a border punch (always have to save these so it is good to use a few).

I hope you are still with me - details of items used are at the bottom

Circle Die - Spellbinders
Cream picket Fence - freebie die given away with recent magazine
Tree and Foliage in background - Sheltering Tree stamps from Stampin' Up
Row of Die Cut Flowers - die from Sizzix
'Shrub' - Tree die from Sizzix
Kraft picket Fence - die from Sizzix
Cats - Impression Obsession dies
Lacy Border - die from a set bought in The Works (they have an interesting range at good prices)
Sentiment - computer generated on Stampin' Up punched shapes
Tiny Pink Flowers - waste from a border punch