Jacques
I
grew up in the North East of England in a small village called New Hartley,
which is approximately fourteen miles north of
Newcastle upon Tyne. I started cake decoration
just over twenty-eight years ago. The first cake decoration course I attended
was an evening class at the local High School. Even though I did not have a
great deal of experience I knew the course left a lot to be desired, so I
enrolled on the City and Guilds 121 course at Newcastle upon Tyne College of
Arts and Technology. When I had finished the course (three years later) I knew
there was still a lot to learn, but there were no courses available. A friend at
college suggested I joined the Northumbria Branch of the British Sugarcraft
Guild as a way of furthering my knowledge. This I did in 1984 and I am now well
and truly addicted to sugarcraft.
In
1986 I married Christopher and moved to
Warrington,
Cheshire. In 1989 I was made
redundant and decided to find out if I could earn a living by creating designer
cakes to order, teaching cake decoration and demonstrating sugarcraft
techniques. Its hard work, but it is possible. I became an Accredited
Demonstrator for the British Sugarcraft Guild in 1990 and now travel all over
the
UK demonstrating
various aspects of sugarcraft. I started to enter competitions in 1992, as I
needed a challenge. By the time I entered my second competition piece the judges
already recognised my style i.e. a lot of piping and a design they had not seen
before. This does cause problems as its getting very hard to think of a design /
technique the judges have not seen. Sometimes the idea works and
sometimes it does not and you realise why nobody else has done it before.
I was on the committee for organising the 1993 and
1997 British Sugarcraft Guild International Exhibition. In October 1994 I was
approached by Merehurst Fairfax to write a book on Extension work. It was always
one of my goals to write a book, so of course I said ‘yes’. If I had known then
how much work is actually involved, I probably have said “thank you for asking,
but no thank you”. The book is in the Sugarcraft Skills Series and was published
in April 1996. I have since written various sugarcraft articles for magazines.
I became a member of Ladycakes in 2003 and have
written various sugarcraft articles for the Ladycakes website since joining.
Ladycakes held their first Retreat in 2004, I was
one delighted to be invited as one of the tutors. The second Retreat was held in
2005 where again I was asked to be one of the tutors.
In 2006 I had the privilege of being invited to be
one of the demonstrators at the ICES Annual Cake Convention in Grapevine
Texas.
This will be Christine's 3rd year teaching at our Retreat.
To see Christine's work
