Lacquistry Sedona Red

Since there is a hockey game tonight, I figure I would finally show you one of my hockey polishes. Sometime last year, Lacquistry opened up some custom orders for people and I jumped at the chance because I have never had a polish custom-made for me outside of frankens and stuff. Since the Coyotes were in the middle of playoffs, I decided to have three colors made for me. I wanted to take three things that were Coyotes to the core: their old jersey colors, the Whiteout, and their current color scheme. I sent her a few ideas of what I wanted, and she did a great job making custom polishes for me.

sedonared_bottle

This is the first one I’m going to show you called Sedona Red. It’s the official name of the color we use.

sedonared

I layered Sedona Red over OPI Got the Blues for Red. My middle finger was painted completely with it, while my other nails were GLITTER GRADIENT’D! Sedona Red contains fine red glitter with larger black and white hexes and smaller gold hexes.

sedonared2

This uses all the colors in our current jerseys and logo. In hindsight, I probably should have gone with black and white bar glitter with gold hexes, but I do love this the way it is.

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I wore this to our home opener against the Blackhawks. I can’t say we did very well, but it was a seriously fun game, and we were upgraded to the lower level! This is what my view looked like:

I have never sat down there, but it was pretty cool. The game looks soooo much faster than where I usually sit, and boy do those players look a lot bigger. The fans were a little weirder though, but I think I just missed my regular crew.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

See you next Wednesday!

Looks like I only have a few minutes to write this post, but I am heading out to Long Beach now and I won’t be back until late Monday. There will be no new post on Monday, but I will return to action on Wednesday with a cute new color for you to ogle over!

Here, I’ll tide you over with my playoff nails:

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Last year, I Hipstamatic’d a lot of the photos I took and posted during my trip on Twitter. If you’d like to follow along this year, please feel free to follow me at @elbee! You’ll probably see me posting stuff on the road, food (oh the food), cars (oh the cars), and Game 2 of the Hawks-Yotes series (OH THE HOCKEY!). If that’s your thing, I’ll try to do my best again this year. I assure you, you will be highly amused.

Have a great (playoff) weekend, everyone! And remember, LET’S GO COYOTES!! *clap clap clapclapclap*

Max Factor Fantasy Fire + Essie Bobbing For Baubles

Happy Monday, everyone! It is a happy Monday for Phoenix Coyotes fans everywhere, as this past weekend, we won our first Pacific Division title in franchise history!! While I am so elated about this incredible accomplishment, I am the most happy for all the fans and season ticket holders who have stuck with this team since its inception and relocation to Phoenix in the mid-1990s. They really do deserve that banner, and I cannot wait for it to be hung in the arena at the start of next season! Ahhhhhh, I am so excited right now! AND the best part: we don’t have to play the Detroit Red Wings for a third year in a row! I rejoice wholeheartedly!

I cannot believe I am so excited for this year’s playoffs. Every single game is on TV, and I am probably going to be glued to my TV, watching all the games, and plotting new nail posts for the blog. :D

I will, however, be unable to go to one of the games this weekend, but the BF and I are sending louder Coyotes fans in our place to cheer for us, worry not! We will be in southern California for the Long Beach Grand Prix this weekend, aka our annual foodie & racing trip.

To celebrate, I have a super awesome mani for you! I hope you’re not too sick of lovely shimmer duochromes. Tonight I have the ever-so gorgeous Max Factor Fantasy Fire, which I received from a wonderful friend in Ireland who muled it for me! Thank you soooooo much, Tara! <3

I wish I had the original description for this polish, but I can’t find one. This is coat of Fantasy Fire over two coats of Essie Bobbing For Baubles. I love this combination because I haven’t really ventured away from putting duochromes like this over black or purple, but I’m really glad I moved out of my comfort zone!

I freaking love this over this gorgeous dark blue. I also love that the duochrome comes out a little easier in this polish. With Clarins 230, you have to work a little to get at the hidden green & gold shimmer. This one is pretty effortless; you can see it in all the photos except the first mani shot.

It’s like Master locks in Skyrim and not having a high-enough level to get the perk for it in the Lockpicking tree. As in, I have to go through 20 lockpicks to get a stupid chest open, and there’s only a Ruby and some piece of armor I can’t use? Aw heck no.

I know you hear me talk a lot about nail polish that glows on your nails, but damn it, look at it! Can I glow like that in real life? You know, just get me some GFP or something. Or RFP? I like red better. Except then I’d look like a Krarg (but less scaly…I do try to moisturize a lot more, you know!).

There are many good things happening right now; this polish combination is one of them. Thanks for reading! <3

The 30 Day NHL Nail Challenge! #1: Phoenix Coyotes

Hi everyone! Today is the debut of a challenge I am undertaking. For 30 days this year, I will be wearing manicures for all thirty teams in the National Hockey League. They will not be done all in a month, but I will at least attempt to get this done as quickly as possible! I am not very good at nail art (especially freehand artistry!), so this will be very good practice. I hope you all will enjoy this endeavor, and that I do your favorite team justice. :)

I won’t be doing these in alphabetical order, but I will at least suck it up and not post last for teams I don’t like. (Hey, I have my favorites!)

There will be bonus manis as well for defunct & relocated teams. Hartford and Atlanta will DEFINITELY be bonus ones…well, Hartford definitely because the boyfriend specifically requests it. :D

Today I am going to start with my favorite team: The Phoenix Coyotes!

ARSENAL
a-england Camelot
Butter London All Hail The Queen
Essie Marshmallow
OPI Got The Blues For Red

The section I attempted to paint was the curl above the sand-colored areas so I could get not only a neat design without having to draw a coyote head on my small nails, but get more colors in as well. I also enjoyed emulating the stripes on the sleeves of their uniforms. It has been interesting trying to figure out how to layer colors so that you can see all the colors & not have opacity issues!

One thing I am going to be careful of in the future is color that gets dragged by my top coat. You can tell the stripes are not completely white because some of the red got streaky. It’s not too obvious in the photos, thank goodness, but my pinky finger on my other hand looks sad because of it.

I messed up a lot while practicing because I let my brush touch the design directly, and apparently this is a big no-no! I am not sure how to balance not touching the brush against the polish and not adding too much top coat (which causes even more drastic shrinkage & wrinkling as it dries), but I imagine practice makes perfect.

Why did I pick this team first? Because I am a season ticket holder and I absolutely love this team! I love going to games, I love the fact that we can wear hockey jerseys and shorts to the arena, I love how well our players mesh together, and I love surprising everyone in the standings! I love having the cheapest season tickets in the league, showing my friends that going to hockey games is incredibly fun, and that hockey works in the desert, no matter what everyone else thinks!

Just put down some moneys for playoff tickets AND next year’s season tickets…I hope we can actually get past the first round this time!! Third time’s a charm, right?

I hope you’ll join me on this exciting venture, and I hope you enjoyed the first of many! Thanks for reading, and let’s go Coyotes! <3

Lynnderella Mysterious Ways

Hahahaha, how appropriate is this polish for Monday and my hockey blurb of the week? I have to congratulate for the umpteenth time Shane Doan, our Captain Coyote, for finally obtaining his first NHL career hat trick. It took sixteen years of hard work, 1,161 career games, 38 two-goal games, and (this is the best part) 59:59.9. Yes indeedy, he was passed a puck in the final seconds of Saturday’s game against the Islanders, and decided to shoot it while he was all alone. It had to be reviewed, but to see the entire arena erupt in happiness was the coolest thing I’ve ever experienced. I mean, I make it seem like hat tricks are as difficult as a goalie scoring a goal (aka, pretty much never)…it’s not easy, obviously, but it takes a lot of hard work & maybe just a bit of luck. He finally got a smidge of good luck on Saturday, and it was totally worth it.

Talk about Hockey the Hard Way. Good things happen to good people in…wait for it…Mysterious Ways.

LOL! Yes, I totally did that. Now onto the polish. :)

Say hello to Mysterious Ways, a pretty lilac glitter from Lynnderella’s Funny Money collection. I love this bottle shot because of how the glitter sparkles!

I had been waiting to wear this over something cool, but I just couldn’t wait. I slapped two coats on over two coats of Zoya Dove, and I was pleased with the result. The gray didn’t dull the purple as much as I thought, so that was a plus!

I absolutely love the scattered holo in this. It is the cutest thing. It’s like if Mercurial, Snow Angel, & Shape Shifter all bumped into each other, then fell into a pile of purple polish. That is what this looks like!

I hope you can’t see some of the bubbles…I can’t tell if they were bubbles or if they were from overlapping pieces of glitter.

WHERE TO BUY
Lynnderella: Lynnderella’s blog store or Llarowe (both currently out of stock)

Hope your Monday turned out okay! Thanks for reading!