Zoya PixieDust for Spring 2013

Texture appears to be the trend that's taking over the nail world right now, and unlike magnetics and crackle, Zoya has gotten in on this one. The PixieDust collection from Zoya contains six matte glitters meant to be worn without topcoat. I was lucky to be able to get a full set from Zoya for review purposes. Colors left to right: Vespa, Godiva, Nyx, London, Chyna, and Dahlia. The caps on these bottles aren't the shiny black typical of Zoya; these have a matte rubber look and feel to them.



The PixieDust page on the Zoya website (which is what I looked at to see if it was Pixie Dust with a space or PixieDust without) says not to use base coat OR top coat with these. Top coat I can understand, because top coat works against the whole texture idea. I really hate to skip base coat, though; at the very least I want a treatment on there every time I do a manicure, so I tried the first color, Vespa, with my usual treatment plus Instant Artificials routine. I used two coats; three might have been better, but I was not willing to wait for three coats to dry. The Zoya site recommends letting eat coat dry matte before putting on the next. I was not patient enough to do that. I did wait after the last coat so it wouldn't be wet for photos, but adding 10 minutes between coats was just not gonna happen. As an experiment, I took a break after putting on Vespa to see just how long it would be for it to be completely dry, and it was a quite a while for someone like me who's used to quick dry topcoats. About 45 minutes later, it was dry enough that I'd feel comfortable going about my normal business and not paying special attention to it (it was dry to the touch much sooner, about 10 minutes after the last coat went on, but we all know dry to the touch doesn't mean impervious to dents).

Anyway, after that long preamble, here's Vespa, a dusty light green:



And here's Vespa with topcoat:



I stopped using basecoat under my swatches after Vespa, and didn't notice any difference in the drying time or level of matteness achieved. I kept using two coats of the PixieDust for the aforementioned impatience reasons.

Godiva is a warm light tan. Swatch is two coats. This seemed a bit too yellow-toned to be flattering on me, though I can see it being quite nice on other skin tones.



Nyx is a dusty blue. This one really would have benefitted if I'd added a third coat to the two I did put on.



London is a medium grey. Two coats of this one seemed quite enough.





Chyna is a rich red; two coats gave great coverage.. Two coats of this gave great coverage. This has bright red glitter accents unlike the silver accents in all the PixieDusts we've seen so far; that's probably why this bottle shot was the only one where the dusting of dots around the PixieDust wording actually showed up decently for my camera.





Chyna was so glowy matte that I couldn't resist adding some topcoat (two layers of topcoat would have been better) and taking a low light photo:



Dahlia is black with silver glitter and another legitimate two-coater.



Compared to the OPI Liquid Sand polishes, the only other textured ones I've tried so far, I liked PixieDust better. The particles in the Zoyas seem finer, so the texture is not as rough, and the glitter is more sparkly. There are six more colors of PixieDust coming for summer; I believe those are going to be available April 1st, and one of them is purple, so I'll be keeping an eye out.

The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider.