MAC Light Affair Dupe - BB Couture Intake Valve

My interest in nail polish started way too late for the Love Lace collection from MAC, but I saw Light Affair and really wanted it! I checked ebay and it was going for around $26 (more than double retail), so I gave up. I later saw a swatch of BB Couture Intake Valve (from their men's collection) and thought it looked very similar so I bought it. A few weeks ago I was able to score Light Affair on ebay for a decent price and I finally got it today.



They are really very similar! Both are kind of a grayish, lavender-ish nude creams that look a bit different depending on the light. Intake Valve has a very subtle shimmer in the bottle but it disappears on the nail. It looks just barely lighter than Light Affair if you look really carefully, but it's by far the closest substitute out there, and they're way too close to each other to justify owning both if you already have one. The formula on IV was easier to work with and a bit more opaque, although I am wearing three coats of each color in the pictures.

Light Affair is available on ebay, and possibly makeupalley. Intake Valve is available on BB Couture's website for $9.95 and overallbeauty for $9 (shipping not included).

I'm not really sure if I love this color in its own, but I've seen some pictures of it with black patterns stamped on top and I think it looks great. "Love Lace" made me think of lace, of course! This pattern isn't lace exactly, but it's certainly reminiscent of it:



I used Konad plate m71 with Konad special polish in black. I'm not sure if this is the case with other black polishes but this one was hard to clean up! It left black smears everywhere and I ended up having to clean everything with nail polish remover and then soap and water.

In other (nail) news, I ordered some polishes from the OPI Burlesque collection and they should be here by the end of the week, yay!