Hello Crafters! How are you? I can’t believe it’s here, but this is my final post on my Altenew Educator journey! I’ve had such fun going through all of the classes and challenges on my journey towards being an Altenew Educator, learning so much from so many fantastic tutors! The AECP final challenge for level 3 was to teach a class. I chose to do mine virtually via Zoom, and I chose to teach a selection of Heat Embossing techniques.

Those of you who have been following me for a while will know that I do a lot of heat embossing, so it was fun to design this class. I taught 4 cards using different techniques, and I had such a lot of fun with the wonderful people that attended!

Planning & Marketing!

During the planning stage of my class, I designed the 4 cards that I was going to create, all with different heat embossing techniques, but with the same colour palette, so that they would coordinate nicely. I decided to use one stamp set for this class to make it easier for attendees to ensure that they have everything they need, so I designed the class around one of my favourites, the Altenew Eclectic Bouquet Stamp Set

I created the below marketing banner for the class (I found Canva really easy for doing this as it is where I usually edit all of my photos anyway), created the worksheet for attendees, and then set about promoting the class.

There were a couple of things that I learnt at this stage; the first was to be sure that you are happy with how long each of the cards is going to take to create. This will obviously differ from class to class, depending upon how chatty the class is and how advanced their skill set is. I didn’t know either of these things in advance. I started out with three cards, then changed my mind and added in a fourth. I decided that I would prefer to have too much for people to do rather than too little, and I left the card with a lot of colouring until last, with the idea that if the class overran, people could colour at their own pace afterwards.

The second thing that I learnt at this stage is don’t worry about promoting about a class too many times!! I posted about the class in a couple of Altenew groups three times, each about a week apart, and had people contact me each of the times I posted. Sometimes you just might not catch someone’s eye, or someone might not see it first time!

The Cards

I used a wide variety of heat embossing techniques within the cards I taught on the day. I’ll give a brief overview of these below, but you can download the step-by-step instructions and complete supply list HERE if you would like more details.

I kicked off the first card with some clear heat embossing on the background, with the focal point embossed in gold and coloured with my alcohol markers. I had some questions during the class about whether you can use alcohol markers with heat embossing – in my experience, the nibs on the Altenew alcohol markers are definitely up for the challenge!

The second card I created was an emboss resist technique. This was quite a quick card to create, but I love the effect that using a coloured cardstock underneath the ink blending gives. Also, bleaching out some of the ink on the flowers adds an extra dimension. I actually think this would make a beautiful sympathy card too!

The third card I chose to do was another simple one, showcasing heat embossing with multiple colours of powders. We talked about how to effectively space out the leaves for each colour so that you get a nice, balanced end result.

The fourth card was the showstopper. I had planned for this to take the most time and it ended up taking almost half of the class. The background is a tri-colour blend of embossing powders and a technique that I love. The peace that came over the class while we were colouring was so lovely, but this time also gave us a chance to chat a little and get to know each other a little bit.

The Big Day!

So the big day rolled around and I was feeling VERY nervous!! I’d actually taught a practice class with a group run by the exceptionally kind Bridget Casey, which had gone really well, but there’s nothing like being assessed to ramp up those nerves!!

Luckily the class went well! A really lovely group of crafters attended and were very supportive and enthusiastic. I’ve not taught an online class for about 2 years, so I’d forgotten how difficult it is to see whether everyone is at the same point during the class, but I kept checking in to make sure that everyone was keeping up! Luckily we finished right on time, and the class made some beautiful creations, photos of which I’ve included below!

My main lessons in terms of the day were firstly, make sure you have your tech sorted before the class! I was originally going to do the class in Google Meet. Luckily I did a test set-up of this a few days before the class. However, despite a lot of googling and some fantastic support from Erum, we couldn’t find a way to get the orientation of my Samsung phone to show properly on a computer. Luckily I had time enough to change my mind and teach on Zoom!

The second lesson was; prepare for people not to show up!! Only half of the people that signed up to the class actually showed up on the day. So if you are reading this and preparing for your own AECP Level 3 class, my advice would be that unless you have people that you know you can rely on to show up, make sure that you keep promoting your class until you have enough people signed up that you can afford for some of them to drop out and not be left short!

Final Thoughts

I just wanted to take a moment to once again thank everyone that attended my class for their time, support, kind words, and for making the class such a pleasure to teach!! I also wanted to thank them for sending through such beautiful photos of their makes so promptly! Thank you also to Erum for being there to answer questions throughout the process, and for supporting me so much when I was having tech problems a few days before the class! Thank you to Altenew for developing such a fantastic course – I’ve had a fabulous time moving through all of the different classes and challenges. And finally, I wanted to thank Bridget Casey, for being so kind to me, a complete stranger! She let me teach her craft group as a practice run (something that she offers to everyone about to do their level 3 assessment), and even helped me to promote my final class when I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough participants for my final challenge. I am so grateful to you all, thank you!