Donna High graduate tops national nail competition

Donna High School graduate Alexandra “Alex” Herebia won first place in the SkillsUSA National Leadership Conference’s nail care category in June, a skill she hopes to use to launch a business one day.

Herebia outdid 40 other competitors in Atlanta, Georgia to clinch the gold, working through a pedicure, a manicure, an oral presentation on nail care, and a question and answer portion. She attended nationals last year, placing third.

According to Donna ISD, Herebia’s win is a district first.

“To begin with, it is very difficult for a student to make it to nationals in this competition, so for Alex to win gold was a huge accomplishment, not only for her but for the entire district,” a school district news release stated.

Herebia recreated her winning fingernail art in front of a camera at Donna ISD Thursday. She smiled occasionally, but was mostly laser focused as she drew and styled and sculpted.

“When I’m doing nails, I feel very stress free. It’s my stress reliever, I guess,” she said.

At nationals, Herebia styled sculpted one hand’s nails with a French tip and had to give another a gel manicure with art.

Nail art is Herebia’s specialty — she particularly favors cartoons. She opted for Scooby Doo at the competition and replicated the performance Thursday, using a photo on her phone as a guide.

Herebia painted vivid portraits of Scooby and Shaggy on two nails, adorning others with groovy-looking flowers and cartoonish dog prints.

According to Herebia, getting good at nail art was no simple task. She says at one point her teacher found a nail art class where she learned some fundamentals, but that most of her success came from practice: watching YouTube videos, and then drawing, over and over again.

“It was really on me to practice,” she said. “I could spend all day just practicing one character on one nail.”

It still takes practice, Herebia said, but she’s not afraid of the challenge.

“Anything,” she said. “If you show me a picture, I can draw it onto a nail.”

An incoming South Texas College freshman, Herebia originally planned to study psychology. Her success with nails, however, has changed that plan.

“I actually changed my major to business, because I want to keep up with this career,” Herebia said. “I really like it. I changed my major to business administration because I want to own my own nail salon, or something that follows in the category of nails.”