Fantasy from the Japanese nail art seminarThe Olympia Beauty show took place last weekend and central stage was the annual Nailympics nail competition that is now in its 6th year. Nailympics is now one of the most important competitions in Europe as it attracts contestants from all over the world, but especially from the Japan, Korea, Russia, Italy and Sweden who regularly send competition teams.
This year the Korean team dominated many of the competitions, while contestants from Japan, Hungary and Sweden also collected many medals.
I was honored this year to be invited as one of the judges for the nail art competitions, so I was really excited to see the different entries in the nail embellishment, mixed media and fantasy competitions. I was not disappointed! The standard was very high and in mixed media alone there were 66 entries - the largest of any Nailympics competition.
Like when judging the salon nail competitions, all judging is done 'blind'. Each entry is given a number that each judge uses to identify each score sheet. Nailympics also takes one more step to ensure that no one judge can influence the results - each judge is given the task to only judge 3 or 4 categories (out of 10).
This year we had encouraged some our educators from Russia and Ukraine to enter in the mixed media competition. It was the first time that any Ukrainian nail tech had entered Nailympics! The advantage of this is that the boxed tips that they create can be sent by post, so the competitor doesn't have the cost of travel and hotels.
So it was a pleasant surprise to learn that one of our Educators, Tatiana Klester from Russia had won 1st place in Division 2 of the Mixed-Media competition. Tatiana’s entry that received 95 out of 100 points (!) can be seen below.
The 2010 Nailympics competition judges:
The audience waiting for the competition results:
The Olympia Beauty show:
