Tired of the same old tip and overlay competition? You’ll love the two newest competitions unveiled by Sharon Parker at Ace Beauty Co.’s Fire and Frost show last February: “Trends” and “The Perfect Pedi.”

Trends is a tip and overlay competition that also challenges the competitor to come up with a daytime fashion trend, encompassing nails, hair, makeup, and clothes. Competitors have two hours to complete the nails and 30 minutes to enhance the already finished hair and makeup; nails are 80% of the total score.

“Hair competitions are much more visual than nail competitions so I wanted something more dramatic for the audience, tying in hair, makeup, and clothing,” says Parker, a nail technician at Mystic Hair Salon in Tampa, Fla., and nail competition director for Ace Beauty Company.

For The Perfect Pedi competition, the challenge is to find a model with feet that need work. Judges pre-judge the model’s feet for degree of difficulty and the end result is the correction of problem areas. Competitors have one hour to perform the transformation on their female model Nail art is required on at least one toenail to be used as a tiebreaker. The rest of the toenails have to be polished and buffed. “It’s no easy feat,” says Parker with a grin.

Numerous calls from competitors requesting a pedicure competition got the ball rolling, she says. “In Florida, we basically live in sandals and open-toed shoes year-round, so this was the perfect testing ground.”

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