Review: A Bunch of Zoya Pixie Dusts

I got paid yesterday so of course I'm going to go buy more polish.  It's the good pay, where I don't have to pay rent, so I kind splurged a bit, picking up the other half of the Zoya Fall Pixie Dust Collection, a Deborah Lippmann, a couple of Nails Inc and a few cheap drug store polishes.  Shh I'm an adult.  I've seen some lovely manis with rainbow stripes and texture polishes so of course I'm going to try out my new Zoyas.  

I'm not very good at freehanding things but it turns out vertical stripes are pretty easy to do.  I started out with the usual base coat (still liking OPI Nail Envy), placed a blob of each of Arabella, Dhara, Solange, Chita, Sunshine and Carter on a piece of paper and went to work with a small brush.  I eyeballed the width of each stripe although I found it easiest to start at each edge and work my way inwards. This is three coats of each polish.  Two would have been fine but I wanted to make the edges as sharp as I could.

I of course then put top coat on.  Which I now regret because it looks better without it.

 The Verdict: I'm not sure why I keep buying texture polishes.  They're still kinda hard to incorporate into regular manis and I'm still not not 100% used to the rough texture.   They're sure pretty in a rainbow though!  What do you think, leave the texture nature or add a top coat?

Review: All Three Zoya Pixie Dust's, Cosmo, Vega and Lux!

As you can imagine given the size of my polish collection, I'm pretty well known at the beauty supply places around Toronto.  My main source of Zoyas, Trade Secrets in the Eaton Centre, is good but they're slow on getting the new stuff.  It's gotten to the point where I hassle the nice manager man to get more and have raided his stock even before it gets to the shelves.  Anyway, I was super excited about the Zoya Magical Pixie Dusts polishes cos you can't lose with holo + texture.  Turns out you kinda can...

This is actually the third time I've tried the three Magical Pixie Dust's Cosmo, Vega and Lux.  I first tried a gradient and then zig-zags.  Both were really disappointing.  All three of these polishes are oddly sheer and take about a million years to dry.  It took a modified version of a top coat sandwich to get these even close to dry.  For this polish I started with two coats of an appropriate Color Club Halo Hues polish then a coat of Seche Vite.  This game me a base that was pretty close to the tone of these polishes.  I then added a coat of the silver, then dabbed on the pink and blue.  Of course I added snowflake charms, I can't stop buying things from Aliexpress and these seemed appropriate.  Once it dries it does wear well, so there's that I guess.  And sparkly.

The Verdict:  I like how these come out, especially with the snowflakes.  I just wish these polishes dried faster and kept the same strength of colour you see in the bottle.  Whatever, it's different so ultimately I support it.

31DC2014 Day 6: Violet! Or what happens when you don't know when to stop adding stuff

Dammit this challenge is hard.  Taking proper photos is just the really hard part on top of actually doing the nails cos you have to edit them, fix the colours, and then actually write the post.  Hence the placeholder posts.  I'm totes going to go back and do them proper, I swear.  Ok so Violet.  Not super feeling it, so hence the mature-shirt-for-older-ladies thing I have going here.  Oh well.  It's a thing.  Onward!

I don't really know what I was going for here.  I just kept sticking stuff on and it went ok I guess.  To start I applied two coats of Essie Bikini So Teeny then sponged on Essence Dark Night Starlight, Zoya Megan and OPI Planks a Lot, all purples.  I didn't realise my violets water decals were white backgrounded so instead of them, butterflies!  Oh course I needed to add glitter and studs too.  Urgh.  Not feeling it.  But it's here.  So yay!

The Verdict:  Yeah, this is the kind of thing you see in stores on vacation, you know, for the older crowd.  But the water decals are cool, even though they have a habit of dissolving if you go over them with Seche Vite one too many times.  Eh.