NAIL NEWS: BATTLE OF THE GLITTERY NAIL POLISH (HAPPY BIRTHDAY DUPES)

I have been waiting most of my young-adult life for glitter nail polish to come back into mainstream popularity. Now that it has, I couldn’t be happier. Each time I run to the mall to do some holiday shopping, I stop at my favorite beauty stores to swatch the glorious sparkly varnishes and see if I “need” any new ones.

Most recently, Deborah Lippmann’s confetti-esque Happy Birthday caught my eye. The bold mixture of green, orange, red, silver and gold certainly looked like a party in a bottle. Unsure of how it stacked up to other polishes I own, I applied two coats to one finger and left. Once at home, I dug through my stash to find Sephora by O.P.I. Spark-tacular! top coat and Confetti Tazmanian Devil. I applied two coats of each over bare nails.

For any of you nail polish connoisseurs, can you tell which is which before we begin? (You can click on the photos to enlarge them.)

No flash

With flash

Left: Clear base color with silver microglitter throughout. Large multicolored hex particles and medium round glitter. (This one is my favorite!)

Middle: Clear base color with multicolored large and medium hex particles. Also has very tiny multicolored round glitter.

Right: Clear base color with multicolored large hex particles as well as smaller square and round glitter.

**Cue Jeopardy music.**

Give up?

In the photos above, the polishes from left to right are as follows: Confetti Tazmanian Devil, Sephora by O.P.I Spark-tacular! top coat and Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday.

Here are some more photos, but they've been flipped. They are now the opposite from above.

No flash: Happy Birthday, Spark-tacular!, Tazmanian Devil

With flash: Happy Birthday, Spark-tacular!, Tazmanian Devil

As you can see, these nail polishes are quite similar, but I wouldn’t call them exact dupes. Happy Birthday has a lot less going on in the background, whereas Tazmanian Devil has an obvious microglitter throughout. Spark-tacular! kind of looks like Happy Birthday and Tazmanian Devil had a baby, don’t you think? Another big difference in these polishes is the price. Tazmanian Devil is $1.99 at CVS, Spark-tacular! is $9.50 at Sephora and Happy Birthday is $18.00 at Nordstrom.

Overall verdict: These three glitter polishes are similar, but definitely different. However, the effect is close enough that if you have one, I don’t think you need to run out and purchase one of the others. If I had to choose one as my must-have, it would be Confetti Tazmanian Devil. Wallet-friendly and cute always works for me!