A wonderful surprise!

So I guess this is the "something exciting" I was talking about yesterday, and one of the creating forces for this blog. I entered OPI's Halloween candy mani contest this year. I have always wanted to enter one of their nail art contests, but I feel like the people who enter the first day get such a head start on everyone else they have the best shot at winning - and I always ended up seeing the contest with 1 or 2 days left. So this year I was literally starting to do my nails as the contest started. And I was eating Dots. (And coffee....breakfast of champions haha!) I think I might have been the third entry as son as the contest started? Either way, here was my entry. I used Zoya Pippa as the base, Butter London Blaggar for the blue circles, white nail art paint, and some random colors that I dont remember for the actual dots. I just used my striping/dotting tool to do the art (which is getting kind of raggedy, I think I need a new one!)

This probably took me at least an hour to do. I was really frustrated that it wasn't perfect but I didn't  have time to re-do it. And at the time, compared to the other 3 candy corn manis that were already up, I thought it was pretty original, and since Dots are my favorite candy anyways, it was totally appropriate.

So as the week went on my votes skyrocketed. YAY! Complete strangers liked my nails! I was soooo excited I finally had a shot to win something! But at the last minute another entry shot to first place. Bummer. BUT I remembered that it was OPI who chose the winner from the top ten! I still had a shot! I know I didn't get first place in votes, so I wasn't getting my hopes up.

I found out when I got to work yesterday and it was a COMPLETE surprise! Soooooo excited! And then I started reading to comments below my picture. Really? Do people not realize that a real person did this? Put their heart into it and is now reading their hurtful, rude comments? People were saying they had no idea why I won, that OPI was crazy, it looked like a 9 year old painted my nails, etc. I cried. I really did. I put a lot of effort into this to make it look as crisp and clean as possible. Yes, you can go all crazy with over-the-top nail art but my end goal was to do something that was very clean looking and easy. Something that anyone would be able to do. And if you look back at the rules, OPI was going to judge based on the quality of the picture, the cleanliness of the manicure (no polish on nails, clean lines, etc) relevance to the prompt (you favorite halloween candy! I wonder how many people actually used their favorite? Or just did something that was cute?) and overall creativity. I took all of those into consideration to create a well-rounded entry. I was surprised with as many votes that I got how many people were so upset! And I also dont understand WHY people got upset. People were MAD. People that didn't even enter a photo! Maybe someone can help me out with that?

Ok, enough ranting. I'm over it, I'm very thankful I won. So thank you to everyone who voted for me and thank you to OPI! Happy Halloween everyone!

-Victoria