I haven't purchased any of the OPI Liquid Sand polishes because they just don't intrigue me that much, several of the PixieDust shades however, were quite beautiful. I saw swatches on The Manicurator (if you don't already follow her blog you simply must, she has the most gorgeous pictures I've ever seen) where she applied top-coat to each of the PixieDust polishes and they looked so beautiful I decided I could always wear them that way.
Without further ado, here's my picks: Chyna and Nyx!
Chyna is right up my alley, it's a beautiful dark (blue-based) red base loaded with metallic red glitter and PixieDust particles. This is two coats. With top coat Chyna reminds me of China Glaze Ruby Pumps or Butter London Chancer (two of my favorite red glitters).
Nyx is a dusty sky-blue with silver glitter and PixieDust Particles. This is three coats.
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These two colors are so much more sparkly than they appear in photographs. Usually a blurry photo will catch glitter, but the PixieDust is different. It really does sparkle like the sun on a beach full of fine sand, or perhaps that thin layer of frost on an autumn morning.While the glitter adds sparkle in both of these shades so does the PixieDust, and when you add top coat this additional sparkle disappears leaving a fairly plain, boring glitter polish.With most polishes you add top coat to make them sparkle more, with PixieDust adding top coat takes away from the sparkle.
The formula for both of these was very nice. Two normal coats gave me full coverage, but a third adds more of the rough matte texture. If you look closely at my pictures of Chyna you can see where I must have used thicker coats on my index finger because it has more glitter and PixieDust and less of the shiny base color comes through.
These do dry rough. I'm really not fond of the rough finish. I'm told these are smoother than the OPI Liquid Sand finishes, but they aren't as soft as Layla Softouch or any other matte finish. If you purchased any of the China Glaze fine-milled glitters this holiday season such as China Glaze Glistening Snow you have a pretty good comparison. Without top coat Glistening Snow has the same rough texture of PixieDust with about half the sparkle.
I've heard that these take a long time to dry, but to me dry time was normal for a glitter polish, the biggest difference is that we typically add fast-dry top coats to our glitters before they are truly dry, but you can't top coat PixieDust so it seems to take longer to dry, but truly doesn't.
What do you think of textured polishes? Have you purchased any?
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