I’m going to confess something to you that’s an open secret: I LOVE COMPETING.

Since my beginnings in the world of nail art, back in 2010, I have always experienced every step forward and every lesson learned with passion, and witnessing my own growth has always been a rush of energy and motivation to keep going. In 2017, during my first visit to Salon Look, I discovered a world that two years later would become part of my everyday life as an artist: international nail competitions, and more specifically, Nail Art competitions.

I remember walking through one of the halls with my friend Bea and coming across an area filled with dozens of tables and nail artists working at full speed. I was amazed to discover that nail art competitions even existed. I had never imagined that there were real “nail Olympics,” where artists from all over the world travel every year. We stood there for quite a while, admiring their courage—working live, pushing their talent to the limit.

In 2018, I returned to the Salon Look fair and once again found myself in awe of the pieces on display and the immense effort and work behind each creation. It all felt impossible to reach: nails with 3D elements, fantasy looks with extremely long nails lavishly decorated with hand-sculpted figures, combining wardrobe and makeup into a single masterpiece. Murals flowing across ten incredibly long nails, reminding me of my graffiti days—only on a scale so small it fits in one hand. Shorter nails too, with styles anyone would love to wear, featuring watercolors, gel paint, some with 3D embellishments, others created solely with rhinestones…

And then 2019 arrived.
After I began teaching nail art courses in Spain, I decided to compete for the first time in the Flat Art category at Nailympion Spain in Madrid. For me, it was a huge challenge—even entering just one category. I had no experience, and my goal was simple: to start, have fun, challenge myself, and see what would happen.

I read the rules a thousand times and thought I had them fully understood, so the hardest part began: finding the theme and creating the sketch. My piece was about the world of art—very abstract. Now I think I could have chosen something simpler, but an artist’s life is full of walls to break down. From the outside it may seem easy, but reaching our goals is an odyssey.
We all live that constant struggle between what we should do and what we want to do, and even so, we keep going because love for art can overcome anything. Sleepless nights in which we bring our ideas to life, tirelessly, until we find the right formula that gives shape and form to our thoughts and emotions. With that piece, I wanted to capture the hard journey every artist experiences in their own way, reaching their own version of success—one that has nothing to do with fame. Everyone has their own goals.

The central character represented the artist as I see them: hardworking, humble, consistent, a fighter, creative, passionate, and generous. Around them were the people who make things difficult—those driven by self-interest, money, fame… and false friendships wearing masks (if you look closely, the character on the right has their mask lifted, revealing who they truly are).
And as the fundamental pillars: family, friends, and love for what we do.

As I mentioned, the meaning was somewhat abstract, but it was what naturally came from me for my very first competition piece.

I remember feeling extremely overwhelmed by all of this, as I wasn’t used to creating this type of composition, and it’s normal that the first few times, without experience, you make mistakes that later become valuable lessons. I also had many doubts about whether to submit it or not, almost until the final week, and I got stuck several times during the process because I kept changing small details from the initial sketch… But I went to Madrid accompanied by my husband, who is the fuel behind all my adventures and the one who encourages me in everything, and there I met my friend Sandra and my comadre Ari, who gave it their all during the awards ceremony. And then came the surprise: I achieved third place in Division 1. I never thought I would achieve anything in my very first competition, so you can imagine my joy… and how much I cried!

Today, while going through the photos again, I realized that on the podium appears the great Olena Oezman (confirmed that it’s her—I asked her when I saw the photo and she told me she went up to collect a prize on behalf of one of her students who won). I had the pleasure of meeting her this year at another competition in Poland, and it was amazing to notice this coincidence, because I didn’t remember that we had already crossed paths before!

As always, in two photos there’s always one where I appear with my eyes closed 😂, but honestly I was in shock: winning a medal at Nailympion Spain was incredible. From that moment on, I felt encouraged to keep competing… but then the pandemic arrived, and there were no competitions until 2022.

My next adventure, in 2021, was a very well-known worldwide online competition, Next Top Nail Artist (NTNA). For three months, we had to take part in weekly challenges, and each week the two contestants with the lowest scores faced each other in an additional challenge that had to be completed in just three days—the one who lost was eliminated from the competition.
The truth is that this contest helped me immensely to step out of my comfort zone and start creating faster, in a much bolder and more daring way. Every Thursday we received an email with the new challenge, and based on that we had to work and submit photos of what we had created, along with a video that we had to upload to our YouTube channel explaining the products used and showing how we created the piece.

You can imagine the amount of stress built up over those 10 weeks… I stayed in the competition for 9 weeks, was eliminated just before the final, and finished in 4th place, but very happy because thanks to this experience I learned how to lose, and to push myself much harder, understanding that I shouldn’t box myself in and that I need to be much more flexible artistically. I truly believe that knowing how to lose is more important than knowing how to win—and also much harder! We all want to win, but no one wants to lose, and in the end, someone always has to 💙

I don’t want to make this post any longer, so I’m linking here all the pieces I created for NTNA: [https://toxicvanity.com/category/ntna/](https://toxicvanity.com/category/ntna/)

In 2023, I continued competing in in-person Nail Art competitions… but I’ll tell you all about that in the next chapter.

Have you ever competed? Would you like to get started in competitions?