Love is All You Need!

... For a cute, Valentines-y mani! I've really been in the spirit of everything pink and sweet, and with Valentine's Day approaching, I thought I'd share a few love-and-hearts-inspired manis with you. ♥

Zoya Kendal, Orly Preamp, Revlon Urban, Essie A Cut Above, Wet n Wild Lavender Creme

Perfect Blue

A while back I had entered in Toms giveaway of an exclusive Essie polish, Barefoot in Blue, in honor of their One Day Without Shoes challenge. I'm not sure if all who entered received a polish, but I did and was super excited because it is gorgeous!

Essie Barefoot in Blue

I was also lucky enough to find a shiny blue dusty polish at Kmart, this lovely blue-pink duochrome Blue Brilliance. It came out last Spring, and I'd missed out on it in Colorado, only to find it here in Charleston-- woohoo!

Essie Barefoot in Blue and Maybelline Blue Brilliance

It's actually very sheer and best layered, and the duochrome isn't that visible, but I've been super obsessed with blue-pink duochromes due to my unquenchable lemming for OPI's Sugarplum Yum. AGH it's so pretty, why don't we see more amazing duochromes like that?!

The next day I think I received an online order with a few polishes including Essie's Lapis of Luxury, which I then realized is basically the same polish as Barefoot in Blue-- ah well! But wait, there's more: I had also recently picked up a new color by Sinful Colors, Morning Glory, which is practically identical in color but has a glass-flecked texture instead of a creme. I included some bottle and swatch comparisons so you could see for yourselves.

Essie Barefoot in Blue, Essie Lapis of Luxury, Sinful Colors Morning Glory

Essie Barefoot in Blue vs Essie Lapis of Luxury vs Sinful Colors Morning Glory

I must really like this color if I've bought it this many times, so I feel like I'm going to get good use out of it on it's own as well as layered over.

Maybelline Sunlight

I picked this up a few weeks ago at Walgreens, it was part of Maybelline's Springs 2011 Sweet Thing Collection. This particular shade is called "Sunlight," and it's a kind of dusty, shimmery white gold. Honestly, I looked at the bottle and thought, "Please look just like Moxie." (à la Rescue Beauty Lounge) which is currently sold out but will be returning soon, along with a few others, in the "Bring It Back" event.

Here is Moxie:

(clipped to polyvore.com)

And here is Maybelline's Sunlight:

I really love the pale, dusty gold color, although the formula is quite sheer, and I believe this was four coats. From what I can tell, the shade is similar to Moxie. However Moxie's formula is supposed to be excellent where this one took more coats than I'd like to achieve opacity, and still had visible nail line.

Scrangie has a gorgeous swatch of the real Moxie here, and you can see the formula looks more opaque and the color more luminous. But hey, for five bucks it was worth trying anyhow!