Zoya PixieDust Spring 2013 Collection Swatches & Review

Hey there! I've got a different kind of Throwback Thursday post for you today. Since Zoya has discontinued their PixieDust line, I thought it was high time that I should put up swatches for them! Late 2012-early 2014 were kinda hard years for me so I was absent from my blog way more than I had ever intended, and that meant a lot of collections got left out :( I apologize to anyone who looked forward to these swatches and was disappointed when I didn't post them around the time of their release, but I hope you will enjoy them now even though they are quite tardy.

Press Sample

When I say discontinued, I mean that Zoya announced they are no longer making these textured polishes back in December 2014, but it looks like they are still available (except one) for purchase on their website. I loved these "regular" textured finish PixieDusts, and their special editions like the Magical PixieDusts and the Ultra PixieDusts which actually made it to my blog already, so I'm sad they aren't making any more. If you want these, you should grab them up soon, I'm not sure when they will be out of stock for good.

First we have Chyna, a ruby slipper red texture polish with red glitter. This had excellent pigment and opacity. I used this polish in this nail art manicure I did for a guest post on my friend Leslie's blog a few years ago and I just love it. These all dry to a matte, gritty textured finish; all swatches are without top coat.

Dahlia is a black texture polish with silver glitter bits. This is less of a jelly consistency than Chyna was. A little thick but easy to apply, two coats.

Next is Godiva, a soft beige nude texture with silver glitter grains. This was a showstopper when it first came on the scene, pretty unique at the time. I think it's so elegant! This is two coats, but you may need three depending on your application style as it's a little thin and not as pigmented as the darker shades.

London is a rainy day grey texture with silver glitter. This name is spot on, it totally makes me think of London skies! This one is unfortunately the only one I can't find on Zoya's website :( so if you are lusting after it you might try Ebay. Two coats.

Here we have Nyx, a periwinkle denim blue texture polish with icy silver glitter. This is a fan favorite and for good reason, it's really lovely! A little on the sheer side, but I only needed two coats.

Vespa is last in this premiere collection, it's a light mint green texture with silver shimmer. I showed you this back in a manicure post I did in 2013 as an accent nail, which texture polishes are great for in my opinion. I love this shade, it reminds me of a spring meadow! Another one that's a bit more sheer, but only two coats.

Chyna is probably my favorite of these just because of the coordinating colored glitter, it just gives it something extra I think. These are available for purchase on Zoya's website for $10 each, at least they are for now. Like I mentioned above, they are discontinued so they won't be there forever. When they are sold out, that's it. Let me know if you will miss the PixieDusts! Or if you are over textured polishes in general, or even if you didn't like them to begin with haha. Or any other opinion at all :)

Thanks for looking!

❤ Kellie

The products mentioned were provided for an honest review.

#TBT: My Favorite Black Label OPIs Part 5

Th-th-throwback time! It's the last day of my and manigeek's five-part series of our favorite black label OPIs! I'm happy and sad at the same time. I've saved my favorites for last so I'm quite excited to show you these two. I'm equally eager to see which two Karen picked for her post today, I am the worst guess-er so I'm not even going to try to predict which she's going to show but I'm dying to find out! Her post is located here at the blog beautygeeks, go look!

Jasper Jade came out in the 1996 Rocky Mountain collection for Fall/Winter. I was 10 years old when this came out! I have wanted this ever since I started blogging. I don't even remember how I found out it existed but I wanted it. I finally found it as recently as last December at a decent price on a random nail site. The label is nice and worn so it's definitely an oldie. It's a blackened dark forest green metallic shimmer. It has that watery old chemically formula so it's a bit sheer, but dries so fast there's no reason to fear multiple coats. This is three.

Check out this old-as-hell label! Yaaasss :D

BEHOLD the splendor that is Peel Me a Gobi Grape! This might be my favorite OPI polish of all time. Not. Even. Kidding. It is from the 1998 Painted Desert collection for Spring/Summer. This is a red toned purpley bruise kinda shade with massive amounts of shimmer that reflect coppery orange and bronze. You can't even see the amazingness, it's impossible to translate in a photo. It's very very hard to find, at least at a price you could live with paying, and I looked for it for a long time before I found it on a blog sale last year. Thin but easy formula, this is three coats. I LOVE IT!!!

My poor label must've fallen off at one point so it looks like someone put tape over it to keep it on. No matter, this doesn't bother me one bit as long as it stays on haha.

To recap, here is my 1st post, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Here is Karen's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and last today. Please go check them out if you haven't yet :)

So there you have it folks! Thanks so much for joining me and Karen during this collaboration series, I've enjoyed the heck out of it! I might keep going with the throwback posts, glob knows that I've got plenty of vintage polishes to pick from. What do you think?

Cheers!

❤ Kellie

#TBT: My Favorite Black Label OPIs Part 4

Yay, it's everyone's favorite day of the week again, it's Throwback Thursday! I'm so glad you've decided to join me for another installment of this series, where my friend Karen aka manigeek from beautygeeks and I show off two of our favorite black label OPIs! Have you met Karen? She's from Canada eh and she has the best nails and polishing skills and basically non-existent perfect mutant cuticles. I love her! Check out the first post for an explanation of what a black label OPI is if you're not sure and then let's move on to the picks for this week :)

Blue Moon Lagoon is from the 2003 It's Summer for Shore collection, which was one of the best collections ever. It was full of holographics! If only OPI would do something like that now, the world would be stunned and probably drop dead! This is a sheer light blue holographic. The holo is strong, but it takes quite a few coats to built it up. This is three coats and it could use another even. I don't care though, I love it! I think I got this one in a swap when I was a swapping fiend on MakeupAlley back in the day.

Someone inked over my label! Don't worry tho, it's still legit.

Movin' Out is also from 2003, it came out in the Holiday on Broadway collection (another incredible OPI collection where every polish seriously ruled). I've actually featured this guy on my blog before here, but it deserves to be shown again. Just LOOK! It's a very sheer pinky fuchsia with red shimmer bits and a multichrome flash that turns green, gold and barely blue. I've shown two coats over a black crème here. It's more purple with this base color. What I adore about sheer chameleons like this is that they can look so different depending on how you use them.

Here you get that delicious shift to icy green with gold glimmer. Mmmmmm :)

Let me know what you think about this week's BLOPIs! And if you haven't yet, make sure you stop by Karen's post and see which beauties she's decided to dazzle us with today! We've got one more week to go in this collaboration series, I am so excited to show you the two I've saved for last :D

Catch ya later!

❤ Kellie

#TBT: My Favorite Black Label OPIs Part 3

I'm really loving getting to reminisce about days gone by with these vintage polishes my friends. It's Throwback Thursday time again and I have two more colors to share with you to continue the series me and Karen the manigeek from beautygeeks are doing on our 10 favorite black label OPIs. If this is the first time you're reading, you can see Part 1 and Part 2 and learn what the heck I mean when when I say "black label" :)

Hoodoo Voodoo?! is from the Winter Resort collection for the Fall/Winter of 1995, a true old school find. In fact, it's the oldest one I've shown you so far! This was a great collection but this is the only shade from the collection I have. I'm always looking for Black Magic Mountain and Copper Mountain Copper though ;) Hoodoo is a pinky raspberry crème. This practically applied itself, it was so opaque and smooth! This is two coats. It was actually re-released a few years ago with the new "green" formula so you might be able to find it relatively easily.

Sugarplum Yum is from the 2002 Victorian Holiday collection. It's a pale muted silvery purple duochrome shimmer that flashes pink. Super gorgeous and kind of a chameleon, the diverse looks this throws out in different lighting is really cool. It is semi-sheer so I needed at least three coats to cover my nail line. You could probably also layer it over a dark color for another look. This also has a sister polish in a glitter topper, but I haven't found that one yet.

Have you seen or heard of these two polishes? It's so fun to kinda jump back in time and sport something that was so popular in the past on my nails today! Karen's third post is located at HERE, please go check out her two favorites for this week! She really is amazeballs and I adore her nails! And check out her first and second post if you haven't already :D

Muah!

❤ Kellie

#TBT: My Favorite Black Label OPIs Part 2

Happy #ThrowbackThursday! Today I have my second installment of my favorite BLOPIs, you can check out my first post here, it also includes an explanation of what a "black label" OPI is in case you don't know. In a nutshell, it's a vintage OPI from before 2006. This is a collaboration series I'm doing with my friend Karen, aka manigeek from the beauty blog beautygeeks. She's blogging about her favorites at the same time, so be sure to check out her post too!

This is Japanese Rose Garden from the Far East collection which came out in 2000. It's a dusty light rose pink with a slightly frosty silvery pearl finish. This is actually a shade you can still buy today, it's in the core line. This one is a black label though, so it has some chemicals that the core collection doesn't have of course, and I love the formula. While there are some brushstrokes due to the finish, they are subtle and I think the end result is really pretty and just so classic. I don't remember where I picked this up from, I think I got it in a swap a long time ago.

Here is SRO (Standing Room Only) Silver, which I received as a gift from one of my polish besties a few years ago. It's from the Holiday on Broadway collection from 2003. This is a sheer-ish silver holographic polish. It's very thin and the chemicals make it nice and smelly. This is four coats. The fire of the holo really pops out in bright lights, which is why I love it. Well, that and it's one of the more harder-to-find OPI shades, which makes owning it kinda special :) I also love layering with this, it's gorgeous over dark colors.

You can see the two BLOPIs that Karen chose today on her blog HERE. I'm loving this series, how about you? Have you ever gotten a hard-to-find or exclusive polish that made your heart race? I definitely regret not getting into polish sooner, there were such treasures to be had!

Talk to you again soon :)

❤ Kellie

#TBT: My Favorite Black Label OPIs Part 1

It's #ThrowbackThursday time! I'm doing a nice little collaboration with one of my favorite Canadian nail gals, Karen aka manigeek from the beauty blog beautygeeks :) She does the nail posts on the blog and her sister Janine is the main beauty author. Her nails are incredible and I'm so jealous of her application skills. We both love older, vintage nail polish so we decided to cross-post our favorite "black label" OPIs in a few installments, hence the part 1 in the title.

A black label OPI is a polish from before mid-2006, when they still had the "Big 3" chemicals in their formula. The labels were changed from black to green lettering after the change. I believe only dibutyl phthalate was taken out first, then the others left later (source). Although the new OPIs from 2015 are back to black lettering, go figure. The older polishes do not have the pro-wide brush either, it's thinner and round. I think most of the formulas are much thinner too due the chemicals, but I actually love them because they all seemed to stay on the nails much longer. Bring back the stinky poisons! (Kidding...mostly.)

My first favorite BLOPI is At Your Quebec & Call from the 2004 Canadian collection (a little nod to Karen too, eh?). It is a metallic swampy olive green with sort of a gold shimmery duochrome. It looks like a blackened gold in certain lights and almost not green at all, which is crazy cool. This is stunning and such a perfect color to me. I can't remember exactly where I bought this from, might've been a blog sale or ebay haha, but I've had it for a long time and I am just head over heels.

This is Apricotcha Cheating from the 2003 Las Vegas collection. It's a soft peachy orange jelly crème, shiny and so spring-y. I had this polish on my wishlist for a long time before I found it, and when I did it was in a nail salon that did not want to sell it to me. I had to do some serious begging and pleading to get them to finally agree to let me purchase it haha, maybe because it was basically completely full, I don't know. But I am so glad I have it because I really love it. This is three coats.

Please check out Karen's post on her first two favorite black label OPIs HERE, seriously you'll fall in love with her nails! We are both doing 10 BLOPIs each, consequently there will be four more installments of this series so stay tuned next week for another #ThrowbackThursday! What do you think of these colors? Do you have any cool vintage polishes that you love?

We'll see ya soon!

❤ Kellie

Throwback Thursday: China Glaze 100 Proof Pink and No Way José

Heeeeeey good lookin! Today is Thursday so I thought I'd do a little throwback for you! This might become a regular feature because I have a lot of older, "vintage" polishes that I've collected over the years, but we'll see. Today my picks are two China Glaze polishes from the 2006 Tequila Toes collection. It was a collection full of GLASS FLECKS! I really adore that finish. Recently a few of my nail blogger homegirls have been trying to campaign to have China Glaze bring them back haha! We can dream right? Anyway, here are two polishes I found lurking on ebay that I could not pass up.

This is 100 Proof Pink, a sexy squishy warm pink jelly crème with silver glass fleck. I say it's a "jelly crème" and not a "crelly" because it's pretty opaque, more so than I expected. This is two coats. I am just head over my freaking heels for this, it's spectacular!

And this is No Way José, a warm vibrant lavender with silver glass flecks. This one is less opaque, more of a jelly formula. I've had this on my wish list FOREVER and I'm so glad I own it now. It's quite unique no? This is three coats and I loved every one of them.

I actually reviewed another polish from this collection back in the day, Drinkin' My Blues Away, if you wanna peek at that. Ooh, my poor cuticles back then! Don't judge me. Regardless, that polish is bangin'. And these are just as amazing! I am a happy girl! You might be able to pick these up on ebay like I did, or amazon, or they might pop up on a blog sale if you keep your eyes peeled. What do you think of these pretty babies?

Until next time, stay classy!

❤ Kellie