Hi Everyone!

I’m so excited to share this tutorial with you as this has been one of my favorite projects to date. I have always loved jungle themed stuff and was so happy Tim Holtz created this super cool and whimsical elephant craft die as well as some other jungle animals that I will be playing with later. This die is called Clarence. So cute :)

I was inspired by Tami at playswellwithpaper to put all of these elements together and she has a wonderful tutorial I highly recommend that you check out. She has some awesome photos of all the steps and you can view them here.

So here’s what I did….

For this project I started out cutting up an Amazon box to make a shadow box type of frame. I used hot glue and then modge podge to glue strips of newspaper at all the seams to make it more sturdy. Then I painted all the edges with dark brown paint.

Next, I cut a manila file folder in half (at the fold) and used Tim Holtz Distress Paint in Peeled Paint, Lucky Clover, Mowed Lawn and Salty Ocean to dab all over my craft sheet. I sprayed water all over and started smooshing the file folder in the paint, coating it all over and drying and then repeating this process until I had the look I wanted.

Last, I inked the edges with Tim Holtz Walnut Stain Distress Ink. I wanted to create depth here to make the elephant in the center stand out more.

I used a similar technique to create the foliage but used 1/4 sheets of manila folder so it would fit through my Big Shot.

I used assorted greenery from Tim Holtz Funky Foliage and Funky Toadstools as well as Spring Greens decorative strip and Cut Out Leaves dies for the foliage and just cut out a bunch to have on hand for placement later.

I think I added Pine Needle distress inks and stains for a deeper shade of green for the foliage. I’m sorry, I didn’t find any pictures of the leaves in this step except for this one. You can see what a mess I make when designing something lol!

Next, I started working on that really cool border. The dies used for this are Tim Holtz Media Marks, Stacked Tiles Squares, and the Lumber 3D Embossing folder.

I painted pieces of manila folder with the Antique Linen, Walnut Stain, Fired Brick, Black Soot, and Scattered Straw distress paint.

For the woodgrain I embossed and inked up the woodgrain with Fossilized Amber, Old Paper and Walnut Stain distress ink and finishing it up by rubbing Tim Holtz Distress Crayons on the top in Walnut Stain and Black Soot.

I cut strips out of the woodgrain for the background and then did the square cutouts using one of the larger square dies.

Then for the blue woodgrain I painted another piece of woodgrain paper with Mermaid Lagoon distress paint and then with Peacock Feathers distress stain. Next I inked up the top with Walnut Stain distress ink and then cut out smaller squares.

I cut out all the ‘marks’ with the media marks die and completed the assembly.

In the end, I realized this strip was too big for this project so I made two more strips in different sizes and put one on the top and bottom of the frame.

I needed a platform for Clarence to stand on and so I could add water and make it 3d so I repeated the process I used for the frame and made a small cube type of stand, and covered it with woodgrain paper.

I forgot to take a pic of this step but you can kind of tell here what I did.

That’s the perfect picture to introduce the steps for the water.

I purchased the Paint Splatter svg from jojoandbellaSVG Etsy store and cut out the shapes with my electronic cutter then dipped them into assorted blue distress paints.

But then, because I wanted a wet look, I embossed random areas with clear UTEE and absolutely loved the effect!

Then I randomly glued water splashes and leaves around the platform I made for Clarence.

Now it’s ready to layout and assemble.

I started playing around with the placement of leaves and foliage and when I had a pretty good idea where I was headed, I started glueing it all together inside the frame.

Sizzix has a tutorial for Clarence here. Once I put him together and added clear UTEE to him since he was have so much fun splashing water all over himself, I needed to build something to hold him up off the background so I just used pieces of cardboard and it worked great!

The last thing for me to figure out was what to do with the back. I’ve been wanting to play around with some weaving so I took an old book and cut it into strips and went to town! I painted it brown with Arteza acrylic paint and glued it on and voila! All done :)