Zoya Summer 2014 PixieDust Swatches and Review!

Hey Guys! Things have been crazy for the past week since school has been out. I don't know how I'm going to keep up blogging during the summer but I'm sure gonna try! I've had these for a week and and am just now getting to swatch them and get them up here!

Today I have the newest of the Zoya PixieDusts! They are continuing with the "Magical Pixie" formula that debuted earlier this year. I picked those up during the Zoya Earth Day Sale so I would have them to compare with these! :) I haven't swatched them officially here but I have used them in a few tape mani's! (you can see them here with Lux and here with Vega)  I did include them in the bottle shots at the end for comparison!

The formulas on these are very consistent. There are larger chunks and fine pieces of the pixie dust in tinted jelly bases. They are definitely "chunkier" than the original Pixie Dusts, and really sparkly.
For me they have more the consistency of a glitter topper on the first coat, except it dries matte (and quickly) You really need that second coat.

First up is Bar, a nude holographic glitter textured polish. This is 2 coats. Goes on easily, but I do have to place it a little with the brush for even coverage. I really love this one, more than I thought I would. It looks like sand!




sun



shade

Next is Ginni, a medium pink glittered texture. Same as before, 2 coats.



sun



shade

Last is Arlo, a purple glittered holographic texture. This is the first one I put on when I got the box! (if you follow me on Instagram you already heard me oogling over it). This is definitely my favorite! 2 coats.


sun



shade

Here are all 6 (so far) of the Magical Pixies. Bar, Ginni, and Arlo are the new ones, and Cosmo, Lux, and Vega are the ones from spring.



comparison

Final Thoughts:

I love any and all textured polish, yall know that! I still prefer the finer, sugary texture of the original Pixies, and I know a lot of people do, so I'm not sure if Zoya is going back to them ever or not! I think these have a great place for use in nail art and tape manis, but to wear them as a full mani (as I have already) makes for no-picnic removal! I mean, it's not terrible, better than regular glitter I think.
For removal, I place a 1/2 cotton ball soaked in acetone and hold it on the nail for 30 seconds, use firm pressure to wipe it off, and most of it comes off. You don't have to break out the foil! (I don't usually do that anyway-not enough patience).

My favorites are Arlo and Bar!

Zoya Magical PixieDusts can be purchased at Zoya.com and anywhere Zoya is sold this month!

Summer melon Watermarble nails with Picture Polish Honeydew and Totes

Hey guys! Happy Friday! This is the second week of my vow to do watermarbling once a week so I can get better at it. Doing pretty good so far! This time is used 2 of my Picture Polishes. As soon as I got Totes I knew I wanted to do something with it along with Honeydew, because they remind me so much of melons!

This came out ok, I don't love and yall don't have to either :/ Totes seems a lot more opaque than Honeydew, so the green kind of gets washed out. It almost creates a bit of an ombre effect with the white base, I guess that's cool?

I don't know how some ladies hold 2 bottles at a time and look graceful! I can not!


shade



sun

I thought this would look cool with a matte topcoat, I think if the green was more opaque it would. Anyhow, this Picture Polish matte topcoat is one of the first PP's I got, how awesome is the name? Genius, and it makes me giggle.



matte

"Midnight Morpho" butterfly nails with Orly Macabre Masquerade

Hey guys! These are my nails for the #LLGarden prompt on Instagram! I knew I wanted to do something with my new butterfly punches, but this came out totally different than my original plan! I still might do that some day.

My favorite butterfly is the Blue Morpho. They are huge blue butterflies with black edging around their wings. I was going to use one of my iridescent blue OPI's for this, but changed my mind! I took artistic license and used Orly Macabre Masquerade , which you can see on its own at the end of this post. I wore it for a day and them used my new larger butterfly punch out as a reverse stencil and painted over it with OPI Black Onyx. One layer of Seche vite topcoat and that's it! I really like how it turned out-very different for me!




sun




shade

Here is the Orly  on it's own. It's Macabre Masqueradea blue jelly base with micro red and silver glitters. This was part of the Orly holiday collection that came out this past winter, and when I saw this, I thought, how patriotic! It looked red,white, and blue to me. I snatched it up and put it away for 6 months, and now here it is! This is 2 coats. I just love it!




sun




shade

Picture Polish Badass with comparison!

Hey guys! I have another one of my new Picture Polishes! This is Badass made in collaboration with Shelly of SassyShelly.com. BOY did this one knock my socks off!

Let's just gawk for a minute. I mean really.



sun



shade

As soon as I put this on the first nail I was like OMG IT'S THE CREME VERSION OF ALCATRAZ ROCKS! I've mentioned it before but my number one fav polish of all time is OPI Alcatraz Rocks. (So much so that when it went on clearance I bought 1 or 4 more for backups)

I grabbed my current bottle for a quick comparison.



comparison

Now since Alcatraz Rocks is a texture they aren't exactly the same. I always think it has such a charcoal colored base until I see it next to an actual charcoal colored base and then realize how purple it is.

In these pictures the OPI is on my ring finger.



sun



shade

I'm not wild about wearing texture on  my toes so now I can wear this! I love this soooooooo much I'm pretty sure I'll need another bottle ;)


Nautical Nails for Memorial Day!

Hey guys! Happy Memorial Day! What are yall's plans? We are gonna just stay around here, probably go to the pool and grill some burgers! The usual!

Today I have my very first Nautical nails...and I have to say....I'm in love!!! I had something way more complicated planned, involving a different design on each nail, a mixture of dots and stripes and all that. When I started working on my white base, this just sort of happened on one nail and I decided to just keep it simple and keep all 3 the same! And I Love it so much!

For the anchor nail the base is China Glaze First Mate (of course I'm using my nautically named polishes since I have them, right?) and I just used a small dotting tool to make the anchor with gold polish. I used OPI Honey Rider, which is  a texture, to make it stand out more.

For the other nails, the white base is Island Girl Pineapple Plantation. Kind of on the fence with this one, it's almost a neon white, if that's even possible! It was chalky and dried kind of matte. I didn't really like it until I added topcoat to it. That would explain why I had such a hard time photographing these in the sun...my camera just wouldn't focus between the white and the gold!



shade

The red is China Glaze Hey Sailor. To make the stripes I just placed striping tape (or you could use thin strips of regular tape) at the ends and used a dotting tool (or toothpick) to pick up a small amount of polish and dabble it in. I always get nervous using creme polishes with tape, they always want to bleed on me. So I just use barely enough!



sun

Add more top coat and that's it! I just loved these so much so I took a bazillion pictures haha!



shade

I'm also still playing around with different poses. What do yall think?



sun



shade



sun

Watermelon watermarble nails

Happy Friday! Woo hoo for holiday weekend. Today I have another so-so attempt at watermarbling. I don't know why I'm having so much trouble with it lately! I'm going to try to do it every week on Fridays to try to get better. I know it takes a lot of practice! At least this time I didn't have any air bubbles, so that's improvement.

This design is by Colette of My Simple Little Pleasures. She has a million You Tube tutorials on watermarbling, seriously, check her out! But....wait until you have some time because you will get sucked in! I discovered her channel searching for tutorials and found this one first. It's supposed to look like Watermelon! I don't know why my pink kept disappearing :( and my nails are super short right now so that's a challenge also! But I know I can master this look and technique on short nails so I'm  going to keep practicing! Search My Simple Little Pleasures or Watermelon Watermarble on You Tube if you want to see the look I was going for!

Polishes used are:
darker green-OPI Jade is the new black
lighter green-Essie Mojito Madness
White-Sally Hanson White On (I think it's too heavy for this)
Pink-Essie Watermelon

base is white nails-also Sally Hanson.



Watermelon  watermarble

Zoya Odette with taped Lux accent

Hey guys! I wore this  mani a while ago but never got it up on the blog! I wanted to do a post on it because I really loved it so much.

This is Zoya Odette, a really beautiful mauvey purpley creme. It is part of Zoya's Natural collection of nudes that came out earlier this year. This is the only one that really stood out to me so I ordered it as part of the Earth Day sale. I love it so much I might order more from the collection during the next sale!




sun



shade

After wearing Odette for a couple days, as I usually do, I added some accents with textured polish! This is my favorite way to spruce up a creme polish mani and make it last a few more days! I just used my wavy craft scissors to cut out strips of blue painters tape, stuck it down the middle of my nail and added Zoya Lux on either sides. So sparkly!!!! GAH I loved this so much.



sun



shade

Polka Dot Nail Art with Picture Polish Bonkers and Beige!

Hey guys! I have some more polka dots.....I swear dots are one of my fav ways to spruce up nails. You can use just about anything to do them, there's no waiting for a base coat to dry to tape, and they are just so classic!

I used 2 more of my new Picture Polishes. Bonkers is a lovely cranberry maroon (it's maroon enough for me to call it that) and Beige is a really pretty nude with a great formula!



Picture Polish

Butterfly Nail art with Zoya Bubbly Collection!

Hey guys! I have some fun nail art today! Last week I picked up some paper crafting supplies at the craft store. I used a butterfly paper punch on blue painters tape to make a stencil to create this look! I used all the polishes from the new Zoya Bubbly Collection. If yall are interested in seeing a tutorial for this kind of thing let me know in the comments!



Zoya Bubbly

Picture Polish Moody Blues nail art

Hey guys! Last week I purchased a *few* more bottles of Picture Polish when I found out one of the USA distributors was not going to be carrying it anymore :( Sad but got a great deal!

Moody Blues has been on my wish list since it came out! It is a gorgeous blue with micro blue and red glitters in it. Super opaque! On my ring finger is Picture Polish Nude with a dragonfly accent I made using my new paper crafting tools and blue painters tape! Let me know if yall are interested in a tutorial!



Picture Polish Moody Blues

Pardon the unimpressive paint job on my thumb nail.....blerg.


so beautiful in the sun!

Zoya Breezi with Vega accent

Hey guys! This is another quick mani using 2 more of the polishes I got in the Zoya Earth Day sale. Breezi is a blue creme and I seriously love it....no shock there. I used craft scissors and painters tape to cut out strips and paint around them with Vega, one of the new magical pixies. It has a different formula than the original pixie dust, which i still  prefer at this point. It's still beautiful though!

Lighting:setting sun

Sunlight

Yellow nail art inspired by Instagram!

Hey guys! Today I have a little experiment.... @naildecor did this on Instagram a couple weeks ago and I really wanted to try it.....but I think I got a little overzealous with my side lines.....I don't totally love it! I think I'm sticking with tape and dots from now on...I'm just not that great with free hand "art" :/ Good thing I just picked up some crafty things to use for nail art and so far I'm loving what I've come up with experimenting!

The yellow is OPI I Just Can't Cope-Acabana, the black is OPI Onyx, the white is OPI Alpine Snow.

sun



shade

Zoya Earth Day Polish Exchange

Hey guys! Just a quick little update post for you today. A couple weeks ago Zoya did their annual Earth Day sale, which was awesome! I was hoping they'd do it again this year and had been saving my pennies. The concept is really cool...they offer almost all their polishes at 50% off, with the intention of you sending back to them an equal number of old, "toxic" or unusable polishes for them to responsibly dispose of. (not supposed to just throw away polish!)

This is what I sent back. It's slightly more than I got, even with the few freebies I got, but I figured....most people are not going to do it so I can take some of their places. :)

This is mostly old dollar store stripers that I don't use anymore, for many reasons. A few half done gloopy Seche Vites, and another free top coat I got a Sally that is total crap.

Earth day exchange

Here are my Earth Day sale babies: to be fair, 3 of them I got for free. :) Aren't they just awesome?

Earth Day haul

Zoya Bubbly Collection for Summer 2014 Swatches and Review

Hey guys! I have the second half of the Zoya summer polishes for you today! They are glittery and awesome and shiny and sparkly and let's just get to it!



Zoya Bubbly

For this first one only, I'm going to show you what they look like with 1, 2, and 3 coats. These can be worn on their own because they are in tinted jelly bases, or as a topcoat with one layer. Keep in mind with my pictures, I only use natural outdoor light for photos and direct sun really shines through the layers of polishes more so than indoor light. Also, if my direct sun picture look a little blurry at times, it's because they are so shiny and sparkly that camera was FREAKING OUT not knowing where to focus ha ha!

 

The first up is Stassi....super pretty green and to me the first thing I thought when I saw the bottle was....that's like a Christmas tree in a bottle! haha!

sun, one coat

shade, one coat

For most of these, if you were going to wear them on their own, I think 2 coats would be fine. But since the sun is so unforgiving, I showed all the rest of the swatches with 3 coats.

sun, two coats

shade, 2 coats



sun, 3 coats



shade, 3 coats

Next is Binx, a pink leaning purple glitter (like my fancy color names?)
This one is a definite favorite for me, just like her creme sister Rooney from the Tickled half!



sun, 3 coats



shade, 3 coats

Next is Muse, my obvious favorite. As soon as I got these polishes I couldn't get this one on my fingers quick enough! More thoughts on it at the end! (ps...I wore Muse with 2 coats through out the weekend and I think it's the most opaque of the bunch...but for consistency I'm showing it with 3 here) (pps...I got TONS of compliments on it every where I went!)



sun, 3 coats



shade, 3 coats

Next is Alma, the lighter of the 2 oranges. Pretty, if you like orange you'll like this!
 (oops, my pics are backwards!)




shade, 3 coats



sun, 3 coats

Next is Harper, the baby doll pink of the bunch. I like this way more than I thought, and boy is it apologetically pink! Not as sheer as you would think.



sun, 3 coats



shade, 3 coats

Last is Jesy, the darker, more red-orange of the 2 oranges.  This is more sheer than I thought it would be. Pretty, if you like orange.



sun, 3 coats



shade, 3 coats

Final Thoughts:
These are super pretty glitters! From the promotional pictures I and a lot of others thought they would be more like the ranks of Storm, Aurora, Dream, etc. And that they are definitely NOT. I don't have any comparisons for these because I don't have anything else like them  at all!

These also look amazing as topcoats over their sister creme counter parts from the Tickled collection. I just did not have  time to show them like that additionally for this post, but I will be showing them coming soon!

I wore Muse for several days over the weekend, and honestly, given that these are by gosh glitter polishes, I was dreading the removal. Especially because I'm a bad nail blogger and do not use foil. I am super happy to report, removal was NO PROBLEM! I did not have to even scrub at all. I just hold the cotton ball on my nail for about 15 sec and wipe off (much like the Zoya recommended method for removing the Pixie Dust). So yay for that!

My favs are Muse, Binx, Stassi, and Harper!

Zoya can be purchased on Zoya.com and at selected retailers, see Zoya.com for a list!