Creating a Globe With Protruding Continents

[acelove27]

I'm attempting to create a spherical globe with continents uniformily protruding from the surface (say 1 or 2 millimeters). I've given it a few tries, but every method I've used either fell short or resulted in huge distortion. There are really two signifcant hurdles, the first being etching the continents onto the globe, and the second being giving them a greater diameter than the globe. Here's a good example of the type of effect I hope to achieve (unfortunately the files provided aren't usable in my project): http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11660

I know from looking around that it's a difficult manuever, but any help would be much appreciated!

[JDMather]

Emboss might work, but have to do a bit of work to overcome distortion.

or

offset sphere as surface body and Extude between the solid and the surface, but again the work is in overcoming the distortion.

Split and thicken is another, all the work still comes down to the distortion. 

[acelove27]

Thanks for the suggestions!

As you've pointed out, the "extrusion" from the sphere after the continents have been etched is not so difficult. The main issue still lies in being able accurately (not in terms of detail, but in terms of distortion) sketch/etch/slice the continents onto the globe.