I figured it's about time that I post about my experience going though with the Copic standard and intermediate certification classes. I took the standard and the intermediate back to back, so the standard class was on Saturday followed by the intermediate on Sunday. These are not short classes and made for a long weekend when I had to drive about an hour to get to them. The standard class is 7 hours and the intermediate class was a 9 hour day, with breaks of course, but when you add on 2 hours for driving it was just long days.
Let me say that it was fun as heck though. Both of my classes were nice and small, no more than 20 people there. This was great. We had time to share some stories, talk, get to know one another better than if there was a larger group. As a small group it also meant that we got tons of instruction and question time. Our instructor Cindy Lawarence was wonderful. She answered all our questions and gave us plenty of individual time pointing out when we should try something different or encouraging us to be brave and try colors we didn't think would work together. I learned so much and had so much fun.
I won't deny that part of the joy of taking the classes is receiving goodie bags for each one. I love goodies. The standard class gave us this wonderful little Copic zip pouch, a sketch colorless blender 0, a refill for the colorless blender, and 4 standard non-refillable multi liners ( black 0.3 & 0.5, sepia 0.5, and grey 0.3)
Would you know it...I made the mistake of having the 0.3 multi liner sitting on my desk when the kid asked to borrow a pen and I handed it to her. She broke it....before I even had a chance to use it. She presses to hard on her writing instruments so I should have known better. :( So now I make sure they don't get put in with all my other pens on my desk and the kids don't use them.
The second day with the intermediate class we got a roll of x-press it double sided tape. I didn't realize Copic made such a wide range of products. I must say that I love this tape and it's been a life saver for some of the kids school projects, much easier and less messy than glue. We also got a 72 marker travel case. <3
Then on both of the days we also go a cute little portfolio to put some of our works in.