Jingle - Festive Clarence

Clarence is all decked out in his winter finery on this festive Etcetera Tag. I enjoyed getting him dressed and ready for a holiday party. Dies from Tim Holtz and Sizzix are the focal point of this piece and are supported by the Etcetera Tag and Etcetera Trims, as well as a few beads and some Idea-ology Jingle Bells. Let's take a look at some of the details on this piece.

As always, I like to begin with my inspiration for a project. I drew from two things for this one, and one of them was the Jingle Cruise from Disneyland. It is such a fun, silly, creative holiday version of the Jungle Cruise. We were so inspired by it that we now have a Jingle Cruise/Adventureland Christmas tree in our game room each year.

Here is one of the Jingle Cruise elephants who found a lost box of jingle bell reins. Notice the Hidden Mickey?

Another thing I drew inspiration from was the year I lived in Kenya, East Africa. I lived in the small village of Kijabe, on an escarpment overlooking the Great Rift Valley. I was teaching junior high and high school students at a school called Rift Valley Academy. I had the opportunity to go on many excursions and safaris in that time. Above is what I thought was a really cool cropping technique back in the day. LOL!

On one safari that I took in southern Kenya, near Mount Kilimanjaro, I tried my best to get a photo of an elephant in front of it. I had a cheap, little point and shoot film camera (digital wasn't invented yet) and these photos were the best I could do.

Although I was far from anything remotely resembling a National Geographic photo, I used this experience to make my own version from dies and paper this summer.

Just a silly picture of a friend and I in our safari vehicle. In Kenya, the steering wheel is on the right and you drive on the left side of the road. I'm the one in the back seat. But enough about inspiration! Lets get started on the tag.

To begin with, I cut some kraftstock using the Festive Repeat Christmas Plaid die from Christmas 2019. You repeat cut it and then I crumpled it and tore it to go in two corners as you can see.

Using Distress Collage Medium, you want to adhere the plaid pieces to the Etcetera Tag. Cover not only the plaid pieces, but also the entire tag and the reinforcer. This plaid adds texture and I was going for a bit of a burlap feel to it.

I did not paint the tag. I wanted to use the kraft color as my base.  I took Stormy Sky Distress Crayon and scribbled it over the tag.

The immediately used my fingers to rub the crayon out and blend it in.

 I added some brown Distress Crayon colors to the tag as well. Here you can see that I kept most of it to the edges as many things will be covering the center area. 

You can also see here that I used the Alpine die to make some mountains that overlap in a way that I was hoping would give a bit of a Mt. Kilimanjaro feel to the piece. This is part of where my inspiration came in. I cut them out of the textured side of Distress Watercolor Paper, because I felt the texture gave it just the right texture.

One thing I added through the top of the tag, was a strip of the Cracked Leather paper, colored with Distress Stain, and made to mimic a leather strip. Leather items were abundant, and I had a leather bracelet I bought from a Masai woman. You can see it on my wrist in the photo above. I also had many things with beads on them. So I added some beads that I painted with Distress Paint and aged them with brown Distress Crayons. I threaded them onto some jute and tied them around the leather strip.

Here you can see the texture the plaid repeat die gives the background of the tag. You can also see the texture the Distress Watercolor Cardstock gives to the mountain as well.

I made Clarence a top hat with some festive berries and greenery from the Winter Wardrobe dies.

And added a scarf to be sure he was dressed warmly enough. You can see that Clarence is cut from Distress Cracked Leather Cardstock. This gives him a perfectly wrinkled elephant skin texture.

The bottom corner of the tag also had some of the repeat plaid texture. I also cut the word Jingle from the Alphanumeric Shadow Uppercase dies from red and grey colored Distress Woodgrain Cardstock,

There is a holly piece in the Winter Wardrobe, so that is the bit of holly you see. The shelf is made from three pieces of Etcetera Trims - Pinked. I smeared some Distress Crackle Texture Paste over them, then when they were dry I chipped some of the loose bits off and stained the underlying wood with Walnut Stain Distress Stain and a bit of Stormy Sky Distress Crayon.

I painted some Idea-ology Tiny Bells with Distress Paint. You can see in the back, that I cut some of the palm leaves out of Distress Cracked Leather Cardstock. Little things like the texture on these leaves really add to the whole theme of the project.

Those are the basics to making this tag. If you have questions about something I failed to address, feel free to ask using the email contact option in the right column.

Thanks for stopping by and reading this whole thing! That was a lot to unpack.

Tami

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