D & R Apothecary - Spring's Arrival

*Purchased by me*

This has got to be one of the coolest glitter toppers I own!! It really is the perfect representation of Spring! It has flowers, butterflies, hexes, squares, & shards all in various pastel colors! 

The following description is taken from D & R Apothecary's website & sums it up perfectly:

"This is such a FUN polish! Tons of flowers and butterflies in aqua, yellow, pink & purple along with hex, square and shred glitter in iridescent, green, pink, aqua, purple, and yellow. This reminds me of flowers starting to bloom and butterflies flying all around. Love It!"

I really love it too!

This is 2 dabbed coats of Spring's Arrival over Kleancolor Pastel Yellow & topped with 1 coat of Gelous, & 1 coat of Seche Vite.

Click on any pic to enlarge :)

I purchased "Spring's Arrival" from the D & R Apothecary Etsy page, and Kleancolor "Pastel Yellow" from Amazon.com.

Check out D & R Apothecary on Facebook & Twitter.

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Black Cat Lacquer - Death Becomes Her

I'm officially dubbing this week "Extended Halloween" here at Nails And A Westie! Not to sound like a broken record, but because of what happened with Hurricane Sandy, I wasn't able to finish posting the rest of the Halloween polishes I bought.. so now is the time!

Death Becomes Her is a matte glitter packed with green hexes (small & medium), lavender squares, black hexes, tiny violet hexes, and even the occasional green moon!

On all my fingers *except* my ring finger I have 2 coats of DBH over Kleancolor Pastel Blue (which can be seen alone at the end of this post). On my ring finger I did 3 coats of DBH by itself. All fingers were topped with 1 coat of Gelous & 1 coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri.

Click on any pic to enlarge :)

Outdoors, overcast:

Indoors, without flash:

My bottle of Gelous is getting old, so it created a lot of bubbles..

Love that green moon! <3

Kleancolor Pastel Blue is.. you guessed it, a pastel blue creme. Like the other Kleancolor pastels I've reviewed, the consistency of this polish wasn't great, but after 3 coats it looked decent enough (especially because I knew I'd be putting glitter over it).

Outdoors, overcast:

I purchased Death Becomes Her from the Black Cat Lacquer Etsy page, & the Kleancolor from Amazon.com (it came in a multi-pack of pastels).

You can check out Black Cat Lacquer on Facebook here.

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Black Cat Lacquer - Paranormal

Another cool Halloween inspired polish from Black Cat Lacquer! This one is filled with opalescent/iridescent medium sized squares and tiny hexes in a glow in the dark base. I chose to layer it over a light base color because glow in the dark polishes tend to work better that way.. and it did! (see pic further down). A beautiful subtle glitter by day, and totally awesome by night! :D

This is 2 coats of Paranormal over Kleancolor Pastel Yellow (which can be seen by itself at the end of this post), followed by 1 coat of topcoat.

There was no sun in sight today, so I had to take pics indoors. Unfortunately I've got severe lobster hands in some of these photos (I swear they didn't look that way in person!).

Click on any pic to enlarge :)

No flash, under artificial light:

With flash:

I held my hand under a lamp for about a minute to "charge" the polish, then took this picture in total darkness by adjusting my camera's exposure to it's highest/longest setting:

pretty cool, eh? ..though it was brighter in person.

Kleancolor Pastel Yellow is.. you guessed it - a pastel yellow. This polish was a pain in the butt to apply. I ended up doing 4 coats just to get it looking smooth and streak free.

No flash, under artificial light:

With flash:

I purchased Paranormal from the Black Cat Lacquer Etsy page, and the Kleancolor from Amazon.com (it came in a multi-pack of pastels).

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Kleancolor ~ Blue-Eyed Girl

This polish is a beautiful blue jelly infused with blue & green hexes. In some lighting circumstances it looks like it's glowing on your fingertips! Application was slightly challenging because of the glitters, but it wasn't too bad. The only thing that really disappointed me about this polish was it didn't stay on very long. I have been using the PVA/Elmer's glue base coat method (which can be found here), so maybe that's why. All I can say is that it started chipping off a lot sooner than I would have liked it to (about 12 hours into wearing it). Since I've been doing the Elmer's glue thing most polishes usually last around 24 hours before they start lifting off, but that's just been my experience, other people have said it lasted days on them. I do tend to wash my hands a lot so that's probably why it doesn't last as long on me.

This is 3 coats of Blue-Eyed Girl & 1 coat of top coat.

Indirect sunlight:

Direct sunlight:

and the macro!:

I purchased this polish from Copious when I had gotten one of their $10 credits, so it only cost a penny! Kleancolor can also be purchased from their website, and Amazon sells them as well.

My random song of the day is "Ceremony" by New Order.

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Kleancolor - Pastels, and Revlon - Whimsical

Sorry it's been over a week since my last mani post. I've been feeling sick for awhile but it culminated on Wednesday night, and I ended up spending 9 hours in the ER. Ugh. It turns out I have Gallstones and I'm going to have to have my Gallbladder removed probably next week ( I haven't made the appointment yet because I'm totally dreading it). Anyways, I had naked nails for a few days and to make up for lost time I ended up doing a kind of fancy manicure! Hope you like it!

With flash..



Without flash..

And here are the polishes I used..

Kleancolors Pastels, Barry M Mint Green, Kiss Nail Striper in Silver Glitter, Revlon Whimsical, & Essie Go To Go Topcoat.

Thanks for stopping by!