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For this week’s Last Chance Design Lab challenge sponsored by CND, current Last Chance champion Lini Sherburne takes on newly eliminated Marisol Alvarado. The two will battle it out one-on-one to see who has a chance of staying in the competition. CND’s Jan Arnold will select her favorite look next Friday and you’ll find out who will remain for at least one more week.

 

All Last Chance challenges are done on a single nail tip. They are also asked to describe their looks. There are no other elements to this battle.

 

This week’s Last Chance challenge is loosely related to Dashing Diva’s Bejeweled challenge.

 

Your Own Jewel: Create a bejeweled nail on a single nail tip. Here’s the catch: You can’t use any embellishments. You must build the jewels out of nail products (liquid and powder, gel, gel-polish) and you can paint and polish your sculpted nail.

 

Here are the looks they created:

 

Lini_lastchance7-LR
 

Lini Sherburne

This challenge was so much fun! I have certainly never created my own “jewels” before, and this was a fantastic learning opportunity. For my bejeweled nail, I wanted to create an Indian wedding inspired nail, inspired by all of the vivid colors, beautiful patterns, henna tattoos and of course, jewels. Every piece of my design was created using acrylic and then applied to the nail in layers, aside from a few “accent” spots of silver. I mixed CND Additives with clear acrylic powder to create my custom gem inspired colors, and then sculpted each individual stone on clear plastic. Once the gems were hardened, I peeled them off to be individually attached to the nail to create my pattern. The base of the nail was created with custom blended Shellac colors, finished with a coat of Gold VIP Status. Each layer of jewels was affixed to wet Shellac top coat, cured, and then repeated until the design was complete.

 

Marisol_lastchance7-LR
 

Marisol Alvarado

When I received this challenge, I was excited to have a chance to redeem myself in a bejeweled theme. But at the same time I was intimidated by the challenge — how was I going to make my own jewels!?! I started playing around with acrylic and builder gel to see what I could come up with. I really liked the vibrant jewel look when I mixed different colored glitter into clear builder gel, so I went that route and I like how the jewels turned out! Thanks for the creative challenge! To create this look I took a single nail tip and applied a swirl stencil. I then painted the entire nail tip with a lilac-colored Shellac, covering the swirl stencil as well. Once cured, I removed the stencil leaving the swirl design pattern in the Shellac. I highlighted the swirl design with silver glitter polish, applied a gel top coat, and cured under a UV light. Once I had the right mix of glitter in my clear builder gel, I formed each jewel on the end of a toothpick and cured them under a UV light. I made several different sizes as well. I attached the jewels with a clear gel. I hope you like my bejeweled nail tip!

 

lastchance_LiniWinner

 

Congratulations to Lini Sherburne for winning this week’s Last Chance Design Lab challenge. That makes two weeks in a row for Lini! Lini went up against Marisol Alvarado to create bejeweled nails using no actual embellishments. The two had to sculpt their own jewels out of nail materials on a single nail tip. CND’s Jan Arnold chose the winner.

 

Jan said, “I chose Lini as the winner of the Last Chance challenge this week because of the intricacy of her work and dimension in the design. I particularly love the ‘evil eye’ gems, the various handmade beads and the use of both gold and silver on the nail.”

 

This means Lini will move on to compete against the next eliminated contestant. Find out on Friday who that will be.