Altenew Retreats

I have completed the JMcG card with the Secret Garden set:



I never intended to make Laura Baden’s project. I started the watercolor (Bridget Casey I think), but between the stencils with two sections and the only using half the image, I got confused and screwed it up. I plan to try the technique with one of my more straightforward Pinkfresh stencil sets instead.

Thanks!

So, I dug back into the Secret Garden Retreat today. I was unhappy with my heat embossing for Carissa Wiley's first card. I tried to convince myself to just put it together and it would be fine, but I wasn't having any of that. Since I had to stamp and emboss again, I sort of reengineered the whole thing.

She had you ink blend on the small panel, then dry the ink with the heat tool. Then stamp and heat emboss in white, with the panel centered in the platform. Then stamp and heat emboss the same image on a larger panel, centered the same way. Then assemble them with the layer between.

I called BS on all that: stamped and heat embossed one A2 panel. Carefully measured and marked the back once cool and gutted it with my trimmer. Inked the small panel, added it to the solid layer, added the (now) frame to the card base, and popped the smaller layer up:


EtA: Dang! Now that I'm looking at the photo, if I'd moved the sentiment up just a little, I'd have covered up a spot of bad embossing!

Final card from the Secret Garden retreat:


I have really come to appreciate Jennifer McGuire's approach to these retreats. She is very intentional about using only products in the kit and showing many techniques with them. She mentioned some ways to take these even further in this class, but ways to simplify and use fewer techniques and still get great effects.

This is the retreat where I completely skipped Laura Bassen's class because she almost seemed to be going out of her way to use as few materials in the kit and as many additional products as humanly possible!

Thanks!

Yes, it was very striking -- Laura's class was about "rainbow" ink blending, included something like 20 Altenew ink colors, including using similar colors to the included ones, but the older formula colors, NOT the ones included.

Meanwhile, in the class for this card, Jennifer stated at least once that she thinks the best way to achieve a rainbow is to overlap and blend few colors!

I will say that I've now taken three Altenew retreats. I think in each of them there's been a product that got little or no love (wasn't really used in the projects) which I've never experienced with Pinkfresh or C&9th, but my only experience of an instructor "going rogue" was that one time with Laura.

Also, I think I said upthread that JM designed this stamp and embossing folder. Actually, she sent a photo of the wallpaper to Tasnim, who designed the products from the photo.

This morning I tackled Erin Thompson's class from the March ('24) Mindfulness Retreat. It was ok. The card is beautiful, but I don't think I am likely to use the Lily Pond products again or at least not very often. The stencils are those with muliple sections, so somewhat error-prone. It doesn't seem like the sort of embossing folder that would work just as well uncolored. Like it really is more of a scene-builder set than a background. And while Erin's bonus cards in shades of gray with pink/red accents were indeed gorgeous and very Asian-artlike, I just got the HA April MMH which does that sort of look with more stamping instead, which is more my speed than complicated stencils. It's a little disappointing, since that was part of the kit that was giving me major FOMO....