Wow, after reading through all the approaches, I'm realized I've got quite an anxiety for approaching people in the street. Great job so far, everyone, from what I can see!
As I'm currently not in an English-speaking country, I'll do my best to translate the conversations if it's somewhat worthy; Otherwise, I'll just describe the situation;
I had a rather busy week where I didn't have a spare minute (my work environment does not involve any new faces I have not seen, and I've been doing a 12 hour work-day for whole week. Work -> eat -> read -> sleep, pretty much) I have included my compliment-approaches, from last Thursday. And some of these are not exactly "cold-approach" compliments, more of a something that came out naturally out of situation - for that reason I have included little back-stories to paint the bigger picture.
1)
I went snowboarding Last Sunday, and this 14 year old kid going fast down the hill managed to curve around woman that fell over on his path, then cut to a halt right in front of me - kid did a very tight S maneuver, covering me in snow; I was rather amazed, and told him he's got some awesome snowboarding skills; He apologized for covering me with snow, we both helped the woman to stand up and shared a ski-lift to the top of the hill; had a brief chat, found out he's been snowboarding for last three years, we had a small chat about snowboarding, weather, how old am I and so on, then parted ways on top of the hill;
2)
I went to pick up a cake from local bakery - a woman in her late thirties, (I'd probably rate her as HB6; Slim body from what you could tell through apron) started packing my cake; she bakes them all herself; I noticed a birthday cake nearby waiting to be picked up by someone, and it had those sugary figures on top of it (Green Ogre, Donkey and a Cat with boots in some sort of a scene, I think it's from Shrek);
"Whoah, did you bake this one too?"
"Uh, yeah"
"Those figures look awesome! Did you make them as well, or do you just buy them?"
"Uh, yeah, I made them" *smiles*
"I always though you just buy these and stick on top of the cake. These are edible, right? How do you make them?"
"Yes, they're definitely edible"
"You mean candlewax-edible or chocolate-edible?"
After a short laugh she bought me a small piece of unpainted "material" to try, then proceeded to explain how such figure is made, showed me where she accidentally broke the head of the ogre and how she fixed it and how you could still see it if you look closely, I made a little joke about kid freaking out when he gets a cake with a headless ogre; Thanked for my cake, paid for it and left.
3+4) Me and and two of my mates were walking from one pub to another on Thursday night; They decided they needed a piss real bad so went into some alley; I lit up a cigarette while waiting for them, and just happened to be standing in front of a small pub; As they were coming back to me with their fingers on their zippers, I remembered some funny situation from when we were back in England, so proceeded to talk half native language/half English when retelling the joke;
Two girls (HB6,5 and HB7) had just come out for a cigarette form the pub we were in front of (which we decided to go to since we didn't really have a plan); HB7 complimented me on my English and said I have an amazing accent; As my mates went inside since it is deep winter here and they don't smoke, leaving me with girls, I jokingly said "Oh, why thank you so-ever-much, my fair maiden, for such compliment; And you yourself, my dear, have amazing.. *pause, while I look her up and down* shoes" in the poshest English accent I can imitate;
HB7 "Oh-mi-god your English is amazing" *giggling like little girl*
HB6 "So is that how you pick up girls here, just speak some English and they come onto you?"*laughing as well*
ME "Oh no, the way I pick up girls is this" *touch the chin of HB7 and go in for a kiss, she backs away, we start laughing*
I was semi-intoxicated, and did not really care, just continued the conversation while we were smoking and making them both laugh; Explained how I got fluent in English, we talked about some fluff, went in and continued conversation at their table; HB7 had her hair down, while HB6,5 had them in pony tail; It seemed like HB6,5 was used to more attention - she kept interrupting me when I was talking to HB7, and somehow conversation went to "So there's this scale where guy can rate a girl from one to ten in looks department; Hair down adds at least +0,5 point, while a pony-tail takes away at least half a point".
I told them their ratings, somewhat hurting HB6,5 ego, making her tell HB7 "He's only saying that cause he wants to drag you into bed". Talk about girl-friends, ha. Anyway, I was enjoying myself and stayed with them for the next couple hours discussing random things (my mates were having some sort of DMC next to the bar for the whole time).
The company to next table turned out to be HB's friends; One of the guys was saying he's going to Ural next month; I'm quite into mountaineering/mountain-climbing myself (that thing when you go on an expedition to some mountain-top?); We spoke about it and I complimented him on deciding to go to such trip and doing something different to what people are usually up to (i.e., just drinking and partying), gave him contacts for the semi-pro mountaineering group I usually join on expeditions in case he decides to go onto a more challenging journey;
5+6)Met up with my first ex-gf on last Friday (we were together when I was 15 or 16; She's gained some weight now, probably around HB5, maybe HB5.5 on a good day); I haven't seen her for years, but we kind of kept in touch; I had promised to take her to an Opera/musical some day, and she kept bugging me about it, so I decided to take her out on a night out since I was visiting her city; She's quite the upper class, rich-family, high-maintenance girl, so I decided to take her on a pub-crawl (she has never been on one); At the first place we hit (Small and crowded English style pub, Bingo!), I've met a group of my friends that we joined for awhile; Some random girl bought a small cute dog into the pub; I've petted the fluffball and told the girl "that's an awesome dog"; Girl was a HB6 or so (Second year student, petite, with glasses, minimal make up, that cute-innocent look) with a weird name I don't remember anymore (I think I asked for it for five times); I didn't get a chance to get into conversation since I've got an insta-****block from my ex-gf;
Continued on chatting with my friends/exgf, and went for a cigarette; Some semi-hipster guy was throwing remarks about how "people come up and just start asking about his SLR camera" to his friends; as I heard that, I approached him:
"Ooh, you've got an SLR camera?"
*hipster-style-sarcastic*"Yeah"
"What kind of camera?"
*hipster-style-sarcastic with a hint of irony or something*"It's a Minolta SRT 1-0-1"
"Oh, nice one; It's really nice to see people who still use analog cameras - I've got an X700, I prefer that to 101 since its got a bit more features" (My mother has been a photographer for 50 or so years - I pretty much grew up with cameras as toys, I know this stuff).
The guy changed his frame (?) within seconds and started asking me loads of questions about photography; He actually turned out to be quite cool, and even offered to lend me one of his lenses that I always wanted to try out; I ended up selling him some old black-and-white films later this week since he couldn't find any place that still sells them.
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I believe that's about it so far. For some reason, I can naturally find some random topic to talk about with about anyone, but if I decide to say "Hey, nice shoes" out of blue, I feel weird and hesitate; So I will try to make my next six approaches with HB's something like that.
...When is the deadline for all 12?