Geek Nails winner wins a new AMD video card and games!

Every so often our team can come up with some great, fun ideas – often a little ‘outside the box'. A few weeks ago, Carl, The Kitguru Facebook Monkey thought it would be a cool idea to involve the ladies who read our the Facebook page and main Kitguru site.

At the time we have to admit there was a lot of debate behind the scenes as to whether painting nails in a ‘geeky' style was a good idea, but we felt it was worth the effort. Why not try something a little different in the run up to Christmas? We could ask people to mod cases, but this is a costly exercise and many companies such as Cooler Master already run huge competitions for modding.

When the female nail painting competition started initially there were a handful of ‘sexist' claims and some men said they wanted to be involved as well. So Carl adapted the rules to open it up to a wider female and male audience and to make the entries suitable for anyone who enjoyed a technology, fantasy or Sci-Fi theme.

We had 62 entries, and not a single entry was male. Not a shock I have to say, but it reiterated the point to me that some people just love an excuse to complain.

So what to do with the 60+ entries?

As none of the guys behind the scenes really have any idea about the skill involved in creating Nail Art, we were going to initially let our wives, girlfriends and select female friends pick the winner. Carl thought it would be great to get the public and readers involved. We went with that idea.

Sadly, complaints were made that some of the entrants were ‘professionals' or had ‘cheated' on the way they created their designs, and additionally others were complaining that the vote was ending up a ‘popularity' vote of the person, rather than a judgement on skill.

By this stage I really just did have enough of the whole thing, and I called a halt to the public voting. I didn't want this unnecessary situation to continue throughout Christmas and Carl was glad to step aside.

I got the opinions of the women in my household – and we narrowed it down to the last three from the ten finalists below. I then picked my favourite from the last three. It is based purely on my own personal preference and nothing else. Congratulations to the winner – announced below.

In future, it is highly unlikely we will be running this kind of competition again. Sadly we are not experienced enough at running such a lighthearted ‘female oriented' competition and underestimated the complaints that could arise, even from entrants family members who were selected into the final ten places.

However I think it was a success overall and I particularly appreciate all the effort put in by everyone involved and thank you for the dedication. We had some good sports, and a lot of people enjoyed the final results.

The last three in the list were, Aileen Elsbury for the browser icons – a very cool concept piece I thought. Raquel Soares with her great Mario artwork and lastly Sarah Fletcher for her Star Wars design.

I picked Sarah Fletcher, who wins an AMD 7 Series video card and a copy of Far Cry 3, Hitman Absolution and Sleeping Dogs to enjoy with it !

Carl will be sending you an email Sarah, and please send him your full address and phone number so we can get the prizes shipped over in January after the holidays.

Check out the final 10 below listed in alphabetical order according to entrant name.

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