Altenew Mindfulness Retreat March 2024

J Mcguire did a live with somebody from Altenew today to talk about this. It is on her Youtube.

That is the pace they have for all of their retreats, as near as I can tell. The pace of the classes isn't bad if you've done the homework, but it is a very long day -- just about 12 hours with half-hour breaks between all the classes.

The holiday one, when I was able to dedicate the whole day, I kept up with the first four classes pretty well. Because the recordings aren't available right away, I think I did the final two the following weekend.

The Secret Garden one, where I miscalculated and wasn't able to even attend all of the morning classes live was very frustrating, but that was my own fault.

I am leaning towards not with this one, but I'll go watch Jennifer's video.

eek! Doesn't feel like a recipe for mindfulness to me!

I don't really want to make "mindful" cards - to me that sounds like cards that are not very useful for me to send to anyone. I have a card in my stash I made 8 years ago that says "the grass is greener where you water it." No matter how cute it is I just can't find any reason to send that to anyone. Maybe for art journaling, if I did that. (I'm making assumptions based on the descriptions above, just my gut reaction).

I think I'll work on mindfulness in other ways, including mindful spending...

I'm really enjoying the scene builder mountain stencil set from the holiday retreat and used it on a masculine birthday card. I would think the waterfall set in this kit would be similarly non-frilly. I don't see koi fish or lily pads as something I wouldn't use on a masculine card either. As far as sentiments go, they're the thing I'm most likely to change about any card I see in a class or on a video.

I'm getting oddly defensive here, given that Altenew often gets up my nose.

But I really don't expect this to be all, or even mostly, the girly florals.

Yes, I agree. I don’t know why I used a double negative, but I absolutely would use the koi on a card for a man.

I'll watch the video and then decide, but right now it is probably a no because I have already signed up for the Pinkfresh event and I have a ton of Crop & Create classes I still need to finish.

I'm deeply conflicted. I love that waterfall and I can see using it similarly to what I did with the mountain scene builder set. I used it with some HA forest dies. With the waterfall, you could use forest, woods, or beach cover/frame dies and have the waterfall in the background. I still love the lily pad. The koi are nice but not as nice as I imagined, but I actually love the fishy puns. Tranquil greetings look to be about as bad as I could have imagined; probably wouldn't even open them. I have plenty of better sentiments. Bloom and evolve is surprisingly cute.

I actually actively resent Altenew sending full-size inks and oddly enough, might be the thing that makes this a no for me. I resent the 6 I have from the Secret Garden retreat -- the space they take up, etc. I LOVE that C&9 gives you the option of cubes vs. full pads vs. using your own ink. The folding mat is not something I would buy, but if it were here, I could use it. The pens I already own. They're very nice markers with a brush nib and a fine nib, similar to what you'd find on a journaling type of marker for scrapbooking. I imagine these are what they'll be using for calligraphy. 30 sheets of watercolor paper seems sort of...why?

It's a no for me just based on price. W shipping and exchange to Canadian dollars, I can't justify it for 1 company and specific theme product that don't appeal to me.

Maybe next time. I do love the look of their flowers w 3d embossing.

Looking at the last two retreats I attended, from the Secret Garden I didn’t see any of the sets get released, but all of them from the Cozy Comfort holiday one are available. Hard to say how this one will go.

I’m still wavering. I know you can use a water brush as a blending tool with these markers, but haven’t tried it. As I pondered the my rhetorical question of why so much watercolor paper was included, it occurred to me that maybe this technique will be taught. That would be worthwhile.

The next answer was still that they don't know yet what the designers will do with the kit, though the customer service person will try to find out.

I know some folks don't like that C&9 designs projects for their instructors, but I have to say that it does mean that if they want to see x, y, and z techniques demonstrated with products a, b, and c, well by goodness, that is going to happen.

In another news, I have spent a little time playing with another Altenew embossing folder/coloring stencil set combo and it is not quelling my desire for the lily pad dreams. At all.

FOMO got me….

They’ve done the full product reveal on FB. The Tranquil Sentiments are truly ghastly, but hopefully I can unload them in the very active Altenew BST FB group.

Well, I got an email for 10% off and I am intrigued again. I want to try other company’s classes. The schedule doesn’t bother me. I’ll do 3 on day, 3 on another day. The timing of being the weekend after PF and also that I’m supposed to be packing up my place to put it on the market gives me pause. What to do, what to do…

No one has shipping notices. I saw on their FB that they were waiting on the inks to arrive and then will ship out. One of their moderators answered someone's question on it.

I noticed that Altenew is really bad at communicating when they do their events. How hard would it be for them to just say this in a mass email instead of everyone have to search for what is happening?