Recap: Nail'd It! - Episode 2 - Nail Candy

Sorry that life circumstances delayed this week's recap, but here we go!

This week we had China, Temeka, and Thao battling it out for $10K and a guaranteed spot in the finale.

The first Quick Dry Challenge was to create a nail design that could make the transition from daytime to evening for young professionals. Although she had a difficult client, who messed up two of her nails at the end of the 90 minutes, Temeka was able to pull everything together and claim the first win of the night.

Temeka's Quick Dry Design

For the Elimination challenge, the theme was "Candy" and the contestants were given a huge selection of real candy treats to incorporate into their nail designs.

Willy Wonka, eat your heart out!

Unfortunately, the bad-mouthing and backstabbing among the contestants continued this week, although it was somewhat diminished. The height of it came during the "twist" when, two hours into the challenge, the contestants had to exchange the work they'd already completed with another contestant. Because she won the first challenge, Temeka got to choose the switch assignments.

The worst was China griping about Temeka's sudden migraine being a ploy or an excuse. Now I don't know whether Temeka actually had a migraine, but as as the spouse of a migraine sufferer, I do know that migraines can come on in a matter of seconds, be quite severe in nature (my husband goes temporarily blind sometimes), and shouldn't be taken lightly.

In the end, Thao's candy nails reigned supreme and she won the challenge, with China coming in second (despite have one nail in her design that literally looked like a piece of poop) and Temeka being eliminated. I think it's interesting that Thao did the least amount of trash-talking during the elimination round—by concentrating on make her own nails as good as possible instead of trying to put down other contestants, I think Thao gained an advantage. (Take note, future contestants!)

Thao's winning design

The "Try At Home" section this week featured Speckled Egg nails. This is a very easy design that all us nail design newbies should be able to recreate with ease.

Sneak previews for next week look like more of the same—girls behaving badly instead of focusing on nail artistry. In fact, it looks like this might be the worse group yet. Too bad.