August 14, 1997- ICES convention report - hear all about the cake decorators convention at Disney World. NEW items...We will fill you in. I hope we can get several members to participate in this discussion. Especially the first timers that go to convention? 

HELLO KITCHEN THIS IS THE CAKE DECORATING CHAT HOUR WELCOME TO ALL NEWCOMERS TO OUR LIVE CHATS! WE ARE CHATTING ABOUT CAKE DECORATING..9-10PM EST... ...HOPE YOU ALL ENJOY. FEEL FREE TO JOIN THE FUN...

DON'T FORGET TO TURN ON YOUR LOG TO RECORD OUR CHAT TONIGHT: TO DO: AT THE TOP OF YOUR AOL MENU, CLICK ON <<FILE>>, SCROLL DOWN TO <<LOG MANAGER>> CLICK ON OPEN LOG...... AND SAVE-AS ---ANY NAME ...CAKECHAT.LOG (ETC) IN A FOLDER (DIRECTORY) TITLED CHATLOG... AFTER YOU EXIT AOL YOU CAN USE ANY WORD PROCESSOR TO OPEN AND READ IT.

WE ARE TYPING IN CAPS AS REQUESTED. THIS MAKES IT EASIER FOR YOU TO FOLLOW WHAT THE HOSTS OF THE CHAT HAVE PREPARED FOR YOU. YOU CAN EASILY TAKE IT INTO YOUR WORD PROCESSOR LATER AND CHANGE THE FORMAT OF THE TEXT. 

BEFORE OUR CHAT:

MSBHildret: I am going to end with

FIRST CLASS ANGEL FOOD CAKE

for Jimmy father who are walking with the angels, now. My grandmother learned to make angel food cake by beating the eggs whites with two silver forks... this is much easer...

ICES CONVENTION 97! TOPIC: ICES convention report - hear all about the cake decorators convention at Disney World. NEW items...We will fill you in. I hope we can get several members to participate in this discussion. Especially the first timers that go to convention?

Have you all seen Pwd sugar's picture and goodies from my web site yet? Go to my site: http://w3.one.net/~proicer/index.html and click on EARLENE'S PAGE. A tribute to a great lady! (MAYBE the picture doesn't work! I will fix it as soon as I have time. Bare with me, my brother is seriously ill right now. It may be a bad week for me.)

As some of you know already, I wasn't able to attend this year's ICES show. (I will be there next year). I hear from Pwd sugar, that they have big plans for us. They want us to demo a chat at the show! LOL How do we do that??? I have also heard from 2 of my friends who aren't AOL members (and went). They thought they were in heaven! Both were first-timers and can't wait for the next one. I don't even recognize some of the demonstrators...So lets just sit back and enjoy!

By the way, Here is the ices web site URL. http://www.ices.org - If you've never visited, you are in for a surprise. Look under NEWSLETTERS to see some of the most fantastic cakes ever!

As I wasn't there, I will now turn this over to Pwd sugar and those who were there. If there is time at the end I have a couple of items for you. Otherwise, mine can easily wait until next week. 

EARLENE'S PART

This years ICES convention was a tremendous success. Over 2000 cake decorators registered for the convention. Over 2000 attended the banquet on Saturday night. Around 1000 sugar pieces were brought by about 500 people. The revised demo list added several demos to the already scheduled 85 demos. If you still didn't have enough to fill your days - you could take the monorail and run over to one of the Disney attractions. My family had planned on spending three of our days at Disney - we got two.

The reason we didn't get more time with Disney things is that manpower needed the help. Manpower is volunteers from the convention attendees who help do all of the work at the convention. This year only 200 people total volunteered to help with the manpower. It takes approximately 20 people per hour to man all of the things going on such as people to man the vendor doors, walk the cake room, man the demo doors, run the video cameras, help with registration, give out demo tickets and etc. Several of us worked many hours this year in order that everyone could have a great show. This is one area you could really help with at next years convention. Just walk up to the manpower booth and ask what you can do to help. Even if you only have a couple of hours to give - that will help. They always have sign up sheets for you to schedule where you want to volunteer. To really become a part of ices- jump in here and volunteer - you will really get to know the people who really work to make ices shows work for you.

MBF821: How many children attended? Pwd Sugar: about 10 New things at this years show Friday night the vendors demo showcase

Many of the vendors set up tables similar to the Sunday night sharing and showed their special techniques or products with no selling allowed. You could roam the room and check out the things that interested you. There were also four demos in the demo rooms that were scheduled for the same time period done by vendors such as Nicholas lodge and Geraldine Randlesome.

Hands on demos just for children No separation of the retail and wholesale vendors -the name tags identified the shop owners and we were all allowed to see all of the vendors.

Friday night after the vendors demos we had a get together for the AOL chat people in a small sitting area near the escalators on the second floor of the hotel. I think that we had about 12 - 15 there. I asked them to be prepared to give you their impressions of the ices convention. What they liked best and etc.

If you attended the convention and are prepared to give the rest your input could you IM me so we can do this in some type of order. If we have more than we can get in tonight we will just continue this next week if that is all right with Dolores and the rest of you. 

The following is an e-mail I received this week from one person who was there and does not have access to AOL but picks up the chat info from Dolores's web page

From Linda Rodin (cakebear@juno.com) As I told you, since I am not an AOL subscriber, I only get to observe the chats after the fact - but I love reading them and have learned so much from all of you.

This was my first ever ices convention - having only been a member since October 1996, when Karen recruited me at my first teacher meeting. Of course, the home state advantage made it easier to get to - but i'll travel however far I need to for future ones - it's worth it. I do think that having been able to listen in on the chat groups made it a little less intimidating - since I already knew a few names to look for and tags to watch for. The demos were great (although some of the titles were not terribly descriptive of the actual topic) and the cake harbor and show cake were simply amazing. Visiting the vendor area was like being a kid in a candy shop - and did I shop. But the thing that stands out most in my mind about the trip were the people. Everyone was so caring and friendly - I made a ton of friends in those 4 few days who I can't wait to see again next year. It's so nice to be part of a group where everyone is ready to help everyone else. Thanks so much for taking the time to help out we newcomers and share your skills.

PWD SUGAR AGAIN

My husband just about hit the panic button in the vendors rooms. He saw the buying frenzy going on and just could not believe it. He said that was the most dangerous area of a convention. LOL of course that is the one area that you can find all of the new stuff. New molds, new tools, new books, new techniques, and some things that simply are not available to many of the decorators in their home area. It is very easy to become very broke in a short amount of time. This year one company who has a line of the large ovens was even there. I drooled all over their booth and thought about it for a day. Eventually I took my husband back to look and the first words out of his mouth actually were "honey you need that - order it". So I did. They were giving a discount of over 1400 dollars if it was ordered at the show. See how much money I saved. Lol

One of my favorite new tools this year was the textured roller that Rosa from Peru offered. She had some wonderful very large bows on her cakes that had this texture and draping in them and they were so beautiful and showy.

Of course Rosemary Watson's sugar bouquet molds are always a draw for me. I have many of her molds and I am so happy with them that I always try to spend some time checking out the new pieces that she offers at each convention. This year she had lots of competition. There were several people making similar molds which meant more choices for all of us. Therefore we benefit.

The demos this year were great because no matter where you sat you could see. Disney had very good video cameras in the rooms and Disney people manned the cameras in the three very large rooms and then several of us manned the cameras in the smaller rooms. The cameras were professional quality and were wonderful to work with.

Demo's I personally attended Maureen Stevenson's - Christmas cake

Maureen showed how to put fondant on a cake and how to do some basic decorations to make a very pretty little Christmas cake with a snowman royal icing figure on top.

Sharon Powell - hands on demo for children - I ran the video camera for this one. Sharon's sister actually did this and she showed the children how to decorate round sugar cookies with three cute designs. She had all of the cookies, icing in bags with tips and colors ready for a lion's face, a fish and a cute people face. Well done and the adults in the group with the children enjoyed this to.

June Twelves - gum paste bride June did a complete gumpaste bride in the hour's demo. She showed all of the steps in making the face, body, arms, painting the face and dressing the doll. Very nicely done with the hour limitation.

Betty Van Norstrand - making drum separators & levels I also ran the video for this demo and betty did a great job of showing us another way to separate our cakes. She showed several ideas for set ups and certainly gave us another option to use with our cakes.

Stephen Orbell - creative stenciling Video camera again - Stephen was showing the stenciling technique developed by Sarah Gleve. A wonderful technique for beginners and it allows all of us to do very dramatic touches on our cakes.

Steve Bennison - introduction to chocolate flowers Video again - Steve did a great demo and gave us some real practical information about the differences in the chocolates. His chocolate flowers were exquisite. Beautifully proportioned and his shading was wonderful.

Angela Priddy - silhouette bride & groom; butterflies Video again - Angela's demo was the hardest demo to video. Nearly everything she was working with was smaller than a nickel and for her to hold on to the tiny pieces her hand was always in the way. The camera would barely pick up some of the things such as the butterflies body or the brides arms. The arms were smaller around than a toothpick. She had cutters for all of the pieces and then each piece only required a tiny bit of shaping to bring it to life. Her work was beautiful - just so tiny that many of us will probably never use it.

Dolores777: Angela Priddy is great! (She makes the gumpaste fairies).

NEXT WEEK'S TOPIC: Thursday, August 21, 1997 at 9 PM ET in the Kitchen Conference Room -- "More about the convention and what we learned there NEW - REAL TIPS" 

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