Nail Services student Stacey Welsh nailed her colours to the fingers of a ‘Fantasy @ Your Fingertips’ model and was chosen as the winner of the best design.
Stacey (30) from Tamfourhill in Falkirk – a second year City and Guilds Level 3 Nail Design and Enhancement Techniques student based at the Forth Valley College Alloa Campus – joined her classmates to create the popular annual ‘Fantasy @ Your Fingertips’ show and she was judged by industry expert Dorota Palicka to have the best design.
The recognition is sweet for Stacey – who currently works as a carer for the elderly with Falkirk Council - who had previously studied and won awards during her hairdressing (Level 2) course at Forth Valley College, but had to give up styling hair due to her allergy to hair dye.
Stacey’s design used all the colours of the rainbow and incorporated tiny icons on each nail of the model –her sister Carrie-Ann – such as a pot of gold a butterfly and a bee, at the stylish event held at the Alloa Campus on Thursday 27 April. She even cooked the ribbon in the oven to make it curly for her 3D cloud, to set off her design!
Stacey, said: “I absolutely loved creating this design and to have someone like Dorota who is amazing in this field, choose my design as the best is just fantastic. She said my design was ‘’absolutely stunning” and that I had used so many different techniques, so right now I feel amazing and have butterflies in my stomach.
“My daughter Bayley who is 12, was delighted for me and she said she was ‘over the moon’ rather than over the rainbow for me. I am very proud of myself and even though I was gutted I couldn’t progress with a career in hairdressing I wanted to retrain and do this for my daughter.
“I have really enjoyed the second year of the nail course at Forth Valley College. In fact I have been here for four years now doing Hairdressing and now Nail Services, and it is going to be really strange to be finishing for good this summer. I would definitely recommend it as the lecturers have been great and have been very supportive when I needed it.”
Hospitality and Salon Services lecturer Kathryn Baird, said: “Stacey has been an asset to nail services since day one. She is a model student always striving to reach her full potential and deliver a 100% perfect nail service to her clients. The thought and planning she put into the nail design and set created for the event unit, was terrific and she deserves all the praise given. It has not been an easy road for her and there are many occasions when a lesser person would have given up, but all her hard work and dedication has paid off. I am so proud to have been a part of her success and she is a pleasure to teach.”
Dorota Palicka has her own very successful nails and tanning salon in Fort William, she has experience in judging Scottish Beauty show competitions as well as winning a number of experienced nail technician competitions both in traditional enhancement services and creative nail design. Dorota’s social media tutorials are very popular on You Tube/Facebook.
Kathryn added: “All our students produced excellent work for the Fantasy @ Your Fingertips show and I am very proud of them. Over the last couple of years we have worked with Dorota to provide our students with additional workshops to enable them to learn advanced nail art techniques such as ‘One Stroke Nail Art’ and 4D design work. This has helped the students prepare better for the design unit which is assessed during the Fantasy @ Your Fingertips event.
“Dorota judged the girls by looking simply at the overall look pictures and the close ups of the nail design, and felt that Stacey’s look encompassed many techniques. She thought it had good use of colour – the nail design fitted well with the overall look and the costume and set designed by Stacey was perfect for the image. Dorota also noted that many of the techniques learned in the workshops earlier in the year were incorporated into the completed design in an appropriate way.”
