A stay at home mum found herself rubbing shoulders with catwalk models last weekend after she won a competition to craft nails at London Fashion Week.

Sophie Donaldson, 32 is a qualified mobile nail technician with 14 years experience colouring and shaping nails for clients in Gravesend.

But after having her two-year-old son and becoming more and more home-based she expected the pace of work to slow down.

Sophie entered the competition on a whim but to her surprise was selected to form a team of five nail techs to feature at the prestigious fashion show which ran from Friday 13 to 17 September.

Led by Suzanne Clayton, under the name Nails by Souz and Co, the team made 600 tips which they applied to models before they strutted down the catwalk on Sunday night.

Sophie was tasked with styling nails around the quirky theme of 'chocolate', equipped with little else other than a glue gun and some chocolate wrappers.

This was a challenging task says Sophie given she had models walking round with 'giraffes and lampshades stuck to their arms and heads'.

"The models were all really nice and the team had a great time," she added.

Sophie, who runs her own business, Sophie's Corner, which she promotes through Instagram and Youtube, says she enjoys the social element of her work most of all.

She said: "I was always told off for talking too much at school but now it's a positive in my job."

"I've been told all sorts over the years. I even had a yoga/pilates instructor who said she had once been kidnapped. She was such a down to earth person."

Sophie also teaches nail art at Allen & Walden, the Kent college for beauty therapy, based in Rochester.

She now has her ambitions set firmly on launching a new type of heat sensitive nail which changes colour based on heat, similar to a mood ring: 'watch this space'.

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