Tonight, the contestant’s nails get inspired by ink, opposite attract, and two of the competitors get sent to time out.
Angela
Age 32, from Alberta Canada
MTV Canada named her their #1 artist to visit, so obs, gurl knows her nails!
She’s only competed once, but won.
Lakia
Age 32 from Youngstown, OH
Her specialty is portrait nails and from her sample work, I bet we’ll hear Lakia use the word “Bling” first.
This competition veteran got into nails because she was a teenage mom and she needed to pay the bills. (and her son is hot, which is probably creepy since I have no idea how old he is.)
Chris
Age 25 from Irvine, CA
Owns Jeweled Nails Salon
He’s from South Africa and moved to The U.S. because of the opportunities in nail arts. And he moved to an area obsessed with nice nails so he did his homework before opening shop.
Adreinne is looking smoking in a fierce leather jacket, crop shirt and a black pencil skirt. And it sounds like her voice is back. Yay!
From the start, Lakia stops Adrienne and announces she would like to be called, “Miss International,” even though she has never competed internationally. She’s got confidence coming out of her ears, but does she have talents?
Quick Dry Challenge
Today’s clients are real-life women who have lots of tattoos. The artists only have 90 minutes to create designs inspired by their clients’ tats. They can only use striping pens for details, which aren’t normally used in salons, but are a hot consumer tool for creating nail art.
Chris’ client has struggled with health issues, so he’s going to pull feminine color influences from her tattoos and then highlight with medical images. I hope he just keeps the medical imagery simple and doesn’t’ try to be too literal, with like germs and disease, because that would be yucky.
Lakia’s client (who is wearing rad black, lace, fingerless gloves) has a bunch of tattoos that don’t really seem to have a theme. She just gets what she likes. She has a cross with a devil near is, he just likes to be edgy. Lakia is going to do, “One good hand and one bad hand.” Is that bad, like crappy, or bad, like Michael Jackson Bad? Because I could totally get into a Michael Jackson hand to go with her gloves!
Angela’s client has a massive ram’s skull on her chest, which represents her daughter, an Aires, and she’s into astrology (Angela would have rocked the Quick Dry challenge from two weeks ago).
“These striping pens are like markers, how can Miss International create a masterpiece with a marker? It’s redik-i-lus. (that’s exactly how she pronounced it.)” I am digging Lakia’s giant “I Do Nails” necklace. And I love that Miss Sassy-pants refers to herself in the third person.
Chris is using mineral makeup to create a tie-dyed effect on the nails’ base before putting the nail markers on top.
This week’s judges are Elaine Watson, head judge of the world’s biggest nail art competition and celebrity nail artist Terrance Terry,
Chris is up for judging first: I adore the nails that he did! Chris used a metal pick to etch out detail from the striping pens, and the judges want him to work a little more exactly. When Elaine offers a tip for working with striping pens, Chris dismisses it, but his client is thrilled.
Miss International’s work is bright and pop-art looking, but it’s not quite like the style of her client’s tattoos.
Angela’s work looks just like her client’s tattoos! She seemed to have the greatest success using the nail striping pens and her client is overwhelmed with the awesomeness on her nails.
Not surprisingly, Angela wins the Quick Dry Challenge, and with it, a big advantage in the Elimination Challenge.
Cue the dramatic music; it’s time to announce the Elimination Challenge… The artists will be creating fantasy works based on opposites. Hot vs. cold, good vs. evil and they must show how the two sides come together. Since Lakia just did this concept in her Quick Dry challenge, I wonder if this helps her or if she’s out of ideas. They have 7 hours to complete their challenge and must include fantasy nail elements. Angela’s advantage is that she gets to work for the entire allotted 7 hours, while Lakia and Chris have to sit out for 30 minutes.
Chris is going with the Land and Sea.
Lakia is revisiting good and evil with a Devils and Angels theme.
Angela’s nails will reflect ying and yang, “but not the good and bad, but good experiences and bad experiences…” it’s a head scratcher — I know — but I look forward to watching it all come together!
At the halfway point, Chris and Lakia take a break while Angela works furiously.
After their break, Lakia checks out Angela’s impressive work, but once back at her own work space, she drops her major showpiece, a devil. So Lakia resorts to using fillers like pre-made crosses and other metal embellishments while she repairs the damage.
Time flies quickly, and I have no clue what Chris has worked on for 7 hours. Other than his basecoat, all I have seen is an apple tree with a snake in it. I guess we’ll just have to wait for the reveal.
During the break, Terrance Terry shows viewers how to do an easy color block nail design. It’s not my style at all, but is simple and perfect for someone who loves mod design or bold colors.
It’s time for judging and Angela is up first. Her model interlaces her fingers to show how the two hands work together. I think Angela’s bridge that spans a third finger (covered with toxic goo) is genius. It is hard to know what’s going on on each nail, because she later reveals that instead of a pope filled with goo and I had thought, it’s the earth damaged by an earthquake. Only the burning building comes off as a burning building at first glance.
“Wow is the word,” says Terrance. “You did a lot of work.”
Elaine needed a little explanation of the theme and nails.
Chris’ model is up next. She interlaces her hands too, so perhaps all of the models are going to do that. I love the background painting that Chris did on his nails and I must admit that his tree is pretty awesome (he has two smaller trees too, so maybe I was just seeing him work on all three). I can’t get over how great the blue water nails look against the green land nails.
Terrance loves Chris’ delicate femininity on his nails. Elaine says his work is too perfect and his quest for perfection sapped a lot of his time that she would have love seen spent on adding more 3D details.
Lakia’s model presents her hands. The look like a hot mess. Lakia did an apple tree, which is really cool, but most of her work looks like it was made of melted plastic. Nothing pops out at me as well done. Several nails are obvious afterthoughts with a ton of pre-made bling on it. (and if you’re wondering, she hasn’t said “bling” yet and I’m shocked.)
Lakia’s nails get their critique. Terrance loves the detail on her devil but is afraid of her angel because it’s unfinished. Lakia reveals that she ran out of time so she started adding embellishments and bling on her unfinished nails. Lakia finally said bling!!!!
The judges deliberate, and then bring the contestants back to announce who has won this week’s $10,000 prize and a spot in the finals.
Miss International is quickly announced as this episode’s loser, but she is unfazed, “as the saying goes, you don’t lose, you learn,” she says. You go…learner! Chris is this week’s winner and Angela is this week’s runner up and will return later in the season to compete for a spot in the finals. I think the judges made the right decisions, and I look forward to seeing if Angela can use her talents to get into the finals. I would have loved to see come if Lakia’s elaborate hand-painted portraits, maybe I’ll check her out online and see her best stuff. (I did. Her stuff is awesome, she does well when she can work at her own pace.)
Next week, the final three contestants compete to see who gets an automatic entry into the Nail’d It finals, who gets a chance in the second chance competition, and who’s going home.
Like Nail’d It? Find more recaps here!
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Adrienne Bailon talks Nail’d It on Qxygen
