Question about drawing

[TammyKat]

ok.. this is just a quick example.. I drew a holly leaf and want to move them around and have some appear to be behind and move them around and eventually have the shape of a wreath.. see how messy it gets? Is there a way to have the overlapping lines cut off?? I want to end up exporting the finished shape as an .AI image so that I can use it in another way... so I want to keep all the basic lines... I can't have it be solid white or once I export as an .AI image it will be solid black.

Does that make sense??