After 10 years of honing her nail art talent into perfection – Sarah Fontaine – owner of Garnish Nail Art in Trail – is now being recognized for her creative expertise on an international scale.
She’s advanced to the Top 9 nail artists across the world who’ve entered World’s Star Nail Artist, a contest by the U.K.’s Scratch Magazine.
Even more remarkable?
This is her first time giving competition a try.
“I’m super proud of my ‘ET’ nail entry that got me into the competition,” she begins. “The theme was outer space and had to include a gold star.”
From the short list, her ‘ET’ design advanced her into the top 21 of worldwide contestants. Then for the preliminary challenge, Fontaine’s second design featuring a pastel ombre blue/pink theme had a panel of nail artist experts propelling her to the Top 12.
Next was challenge one, which asked the 12 nail artists — hailing from China, Denmark, USA, United Kingdom and Fontaine the sole Canadian — to create a nail coalition inspired by five industry leaders in nail art, with the five designs each looking unique, yet cohesive. In addition to scores from the judges, online voting accounted for five per cent of the final mark.
From this challenge, between judges scores and voting, Fontaine moved forward to the Top 9.
“Thank you to everyone who had shown me support during this competition, and especially my clients over the years who have let me hone my craft on their own hands,” Fontaine posted to her Instagram page, Garnish_NailArt. “It’s been a roller coaster of emotions.”
After a busy week of being mom and running her home business, Fontaine was tasked to meet the next deadline challenge for Sunday night, as the contest runs in U.K. time which is eight hours ahead of Trail time.
Challenge two has the nine nail artists creating a look on all 10 nails based on the spoken word poem, “Shine The Light.”
Each contestant is also required to submit a five to seven minute video showing work and technique, and a write-up explaining their inspiration.
Judging for challenge two runs from May 29 to June 1, with finalists announced June 2.
Eliminations take place after each challenge, however those knocked out of the competition have the chance to re-join via a wildcard challenge.
The three finalists remaining after a third and fourth challenge will receive tickets to a Scratch Stars Party in July, and each will be awarded £1,000. The winner will be highlighted on the Scratch Magazine cover.
To read more of Fontaine’s feature in Scratch visit: scratchmagazine.co.uk.
To see more of her designs visit: garnish_art on Facebook; garnish_art on Instagram; and sarahfontaine_garnish on Tik Tok.
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