All of these have the fine grained matte yet glittery textured finish that we've come to expect from the PixieDust line. I used two coats of each color for the swatches.
Tomoko is gold which leans toward the cooler end of the gold spectrum. This is much more flattering on my skintone than yellow gold of Solange from the summer collection.
Adding topcoat to Tomoko didn't make a huge difference in the indirect illumination my lightbox; it was just a bit more shiny. In low direct light, seen below, topcoat made it more sparkly but didn't reveal any hidden highlights, just the fact that maybe a third coat of this one might have been a good idea to make it truly opaque.
Chita is a dark green. I almost stopped at one coat with this one, but went ahead and did two for extra texture.
With topcoat, the gold highlights in the glitter pop out. It's pretty that way, but I think it's much more interesting without topcoat.
Sunshine is a dark blue. I know the name is meant to be a woman's name, not literally sunshine, but I still think they could have used this name for warmer color.
With topcoat, the silver glitter in Sunshine takes more of a role; it looks like a night sky. As with Chita, it's pretty with topcoat but I prefer it without.
Now we come to Carter, which could be subtitled "the PixieDust Zoya made with KarenD in mind". It's a deep purple with brigher purple glitter; depending on how the light hits it, Carter can look warmer or cooler—sometimes on adjacent nails at the same time.
With topcoat, the glitter in Carter takes the spotlight. I like this one both shiny and textured. Of course I do; it's purple.
Here's Carter's shiny face in low light:
Arabella is a raspberry pink. I consider this one the most "muggle friendly" of this group.
The glitter in Arabella did have some surprises for me when I added top coat and put my hands in direct light; I thought it was just going to show silver, but there's some hot pink and purple in there, too.
Dhara rounds out the group. It's a red-leaning orange. I wish they'd gone just a bit darker with this one to make it more autumnal (and set it apart from the orange textures we've already seen before).
Topcoat reveals some sparks of bright orange and gold in Dhara.
Obviously my favorite in this collection is Carter, but I'd wear any of them for a full mani. Most of them I like as well or better without topcoat, which tells me that Zoya has this texture thing figured out.
The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider.
