Where Did You Learn Your Cake Decorating Skills?
Decorating By kaddikakes Updated 10 Sep 2009 , 2:59pm by cylstrial
Hi all, I've been looking at this site for awhile now and am just AMAZED and the skills everyone has. Please share where you learned your skills. I'm just starting out and am reading different things, looking at different things but just don't know where to go to actually "learn". Thanks for your support.
I've now been decorating on and off for about 12 years. I got more into it about 4-5 years ago when I took the Wilton classes at Hobby Lobby. Since then, I've taken one other class with Rebecca Sutterby. I loved the Wilton classes for the simple fact that they taught me the basics. I improved on the simple skills I had.
I also took ceramics in high school, which I absolutely LOVED. It's has helped me with some of the 3D work and painting I've done.
The rest has been from here, books, watching TV and good ol' fashioned trial and error!
Funny thing about me is that I can't draw if my life depended on it! And I have trouble mixing colors (color wheels are the best thing ever!). Yet, I'm a visual person and can usually express myself better on paper or in sculpture than I can any other way.
I get tips and advice from anywhere I can find them. But the best way to learn is to just get in the kitchen and do it! Sometimes I find myself researchinng a technique to death, and then I realize I just have to try it myself using one or more of the methods I've found.
The best part is that the mistakes are edible, and there's always someone at home or work who's willing to eat them.
I was pretty much self taught for several years and then took the Wilton class for kicks. I did learn some tricks but some of the Wilton teachers (pardon me, no offense to the teachers who ARE qualified) were barely graduates of the class themselves! I mean they had just taken class 3 and were starting to teach a month or two later - (I was flabbergasted because their students said they looked like beginners themselves. I would have been livid to have paid for and taken the time to take a class taught by someone who had barely begun.)
I also LOVE the Youtube tutorials - especially by the CC member Tonedna. Her gumpaste rose tutorial is awesome and taught me so, so much. Aine is another one who gives fantastic tutorials on sculpting, roses and working with gumpaste letter cutters.
The library is one of my favorite places to go.... Cakewalk by Margaret Braun is wonderful and there are tons of others with instructions and ideas to inspire. HTH
(In the style of Juvenile...) She get it from her mama!
j/k
self taught basics w/additional skills learned/picked up by the generousity of the many people on CC and Wilton.com and youtube and ehow and and and and and oh yes, and the books from the public library!
"Back in my day ..... "
When I got started, there was no cable, no food network, no internet, no you-tube, no MIchaels classes. You bought a wilton book and taught yourself, unless you were lucky enough to have a cake supply store handy that gave lessons once a month or once a quarter.
Today, there are so many more options. Techniques I'd never heard of or dreamed of were discovered when I happened across CC. You-tube videos showing me the little secrets and tricks of the trade.
Same as indy. Bought a Wilton yearbook, which was like the guide to the whole cake decorating universe. Just did what it said. Didn't always have the right equipment or ingredients, just made do with what I had.
Started baking at age 12, made my first decorated cake at age 16, using colored icing that came in a can with about 4 tips taped to it; it sprayed out like canned cheese. I now realize just how horrible that stuff was, but at the time I was as proud as a peacock.
Made my first wedding cake at 18, didn't have a clue about cake boards or dowels. Just piled them up one atop the other. Yes, they sank and leaned! Also used that same nasty canned icing on that wedding cake!
I stopped decorating for a few decades, then got back into it when my sons were married. Still used the Wilton designs, methods and tools. Came across CC a couple of years ago, and I could hear the angels singing!!
I bet a lot of us started out using the Wilton "carpal tunnel stars" method. I don't know who here on CC coined that phrase, but you gotta love it!
I started by taking all the wilton classes at my local Micheal's craftstore.I had been around cake decorating for a lomg time though as my Mom had a wedding cake business and still does for the last 20 years and I used to go with her on my days off when I was single and living at home and deliver cakes etc...It wasn't until I got married and had kids that I really got the cake passion and that was 8 years ago...Trying new techniques and asking questions and just doing it!!
I bought a Wilton yearbook and practiced the stuff it told how to do when I had time. It became one of those things I could do, but not that well and it wasn't very fun...then, years later, I stumbled upon Cake Central and I have learned tons here 
Books are nice too...if you want to do shaped cakes for kids, Debbie Brown's books are great because she tells how to get lots of different shapes by using regular pans.
Wilton classes, internet, books, and ICES conventions.
one basic class decades ago, books, magazines, internet, workshops, specialty classes, advice from others, trial and error.
ChefAngie: that's how I took the Wilton course - at JCPenney! Hey, we share the same birthday!
I took Wilton classes at JCP, too, way back in the 1970's or early 1980's.
self taught here, books and internet resources 
self taught, youtube, cake central, one Wilton class (didn't learn much at all - basically just that a good way to keep your icing bag when you're not using it is to stand it tip down in a cup! LOL!), cake shows on TV, AND last, but not least....good old TRIAL AND ERROR!
Self taught with books and magazines back in the day, way before internet. Heck, before everyone had a PC in their own home.
I'm self-taught with books and lots of practice, or trial and error (some days there is more error) 
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