Here
I am at the end of my Altenew Educator Certification journey that began March
2024. I kept seeing so many posts with Altenew Certified Educator by the
creator’s names and out of curiosity I had to know more about what this was. I
discovered Altenew’s Educator Certification Program (AECP). This
seemed like a great opportunity to learn new things, renew old ideas &
techniques, and to force me to create, sometimes outside of my comfort zone.
3 of the program. And I look forward to seeing where I go from here. The level
3 final project requires you to plan and teach an in-person or a live “virtual”
workshop. I somehow managed to find myself trying to figure out how to teach a
combination of both types of workshops…go big or go home…right?! Thanks to the
help of my husband and our son, I somehow managed to pull it off and make it
work for both arenas. My
planning started over a month ago when I was given the go ahead from Erum after
I completed all 3 levels of AECP which involves completing 25 Altenew Academy
courses and 2 final projects. Twenty (20) of which they are assigned and five
(5) that you choose.
Planning started with designing 2 projects that could be completed within a
2-hour time frame. Once I decided on and created my 2 cards, I then had to
write up a plan, supply list, and instructions. These needed to be approved by
Erum before I could proceed. While waiting for her approval, using Canva I
designed an invitation to share in the AECP and Altenew Fan Facebook Groups.
After receiving the go ahead, over the next several weeks I emailed the supply
list, instructions, and Zoom link to all of the participants. In the meantime, my husband and our son made sure I had everything set up and working on the
technical side. To make it possible to teach both virtual and in-person we had
to setup a television and run Zoom on my husband’s laptop for the in-person
attendees to be able to see what I was doing while still being able to share my desktop to the online group.
A
couple of things I learned:
cameras.
is to have the front facing camera and your device that shows everyone in the
same area. Because of the set up we used my laptop was off to the side of where
my front facing camera was and so even though I was looking at the participants
when they were speaking it appeared that I was looking off somewhere else.
or project. Thinking I had it down left me reversing a couple of my steps and
while it still worked it could have been confusing for new crafters.
learn to make the projects. My husband was a huge help in being my guinea pig
student and was also able to help the in-person participants.
hand to make the time flow easily without interruptions.
This first card focused on using ink sprays, splatter, ink blending and
stencils to create depth and dimension to our background panels. This is the
getting inky part of the card. We then embossed a stamped image over top of the
background and added a simple sentiment strip across the front for a clean and
simple style card.
My card uses the retired Altenew Color Block Triangle Stencil and Paint-A-Flower:
Sweet Pea stamp set. There are so many great stencils that could be used for
this technique. It just needs to have larger openings in the design.
The second card featured ink smooshing and splatters over a heat embossed
background image to again create an inky, grungy style background while keeping
the layout of the card clean and simple with a simple strip sentiment and some
sequins. Again, focusing on getting depth and dimension to the background.
For this card I used Altenew Shine Like a Diamond background stamp and Altenew One-Go Solid Sentiment Press Plate.
It was a pleasure to craft with all of my workshop attendees! I thank you each for volunteering your time to attend my workshop and I hope everyone got a little something from it. All of the cards my participants create are just fantastic!! I could not have asked for better.
Workshop Participants
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| Walter Zemrock |
 |
| Ishani S Quillish |
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| Jasmine (in person) |
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| Mackenzie (in person) |
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| Jerralyn Rose |
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| Kimberly Whitten |
Thank you to Altenew for this opportunity to find another avenue to share my creativity. And I hope to continue to move forward with what I have learned in each of the classes as well as what I learned in the process of planning and executing my final project.
