Strawberry Shortcake Convention

THE FIRST ANNUAL STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE CONVENTION!!

We started out on July 11, 2003, Friday night from 6-9pm. Our introduction mixer, we had a VERY small area to meet everyone. My mom, who had owned a little, local catering business and bakery out of our home in Pennsylvania, made 2 SSC cakes. This was big as she hadn’t really done that kind of thing for years and was berry excited with how they turned out! Diana E. Vining also made an adorable and tasty Angel Cake cake! We had fun meeting everyone IRL and got down to business with trading, buying, and selling our extra SSC stuff. OH WHAT FUN!!

Saturday, July 12, 2003, was our main day! After some brief introductions and housekeeping details, we started our programs.

Nick from Twin Pines of Maine spoke to us about dealing with VDS, Vinyl Deterioration Spots or doll cancer. He and his lovely wife joined us for our weekend. Nick is a chemist who developed products to clean older dolls and help with issues the dolls can develop over time. They also had a booth there that we could purchase products from as well. They also graciously donated some products to our raffle table.

Diana E. Vining then taught us how to draw the Classic SSC. Diana was unmarried at this time so she was actually Diana Eufrasio and attended with her parents. She’s an amazing paper doll artist and enthusiast! She’s worked with Doll Castle News and currently for the VDC–Virtual Doll Convention!

Jaye Lehmann was up next. Anyone in the SSC Community knows Jaye and his expertise! He talked with us about unique ways to display your collections, no matter how large or small.

After our luncheon, we resumed our day with talks from both American Greetings and Bandai America! Dave Polter spoke to us on American Greetings’ behalf. What a nice man! He told us some great info on what we could expect from SSC in the coming year as well as a little history on the brand as well, since he worked for AG back in the 1980s! Bandai brought their lead designer, Holli Hoffman. It was so BERRY exciting to hear all the news and see all the new dolls/toys!! After their talk, Bandai put all the new toys on our raffle tables and everyone had a chance to win them!