Epic Comparison Post, AKA I'm a sucker.

Well, hello there, my dears! You're looking dapper today! ;) If you aren't all in a good mood now, you'll be in one by the end of this post because either I am high from fumes typing this or these polishes are just AWESOMESAUCE. (And that is a word I don't use lightly!)

Let's start with a back story. (I wish I could somehow insert the wobbly lines down your vision like they do on TV to show a flashback LOL) Back in the day (okay, about a year ago) I became obsessed with my first lemming. Yes, the polish that started it all: Mad as a Hatter. The problem was that it was about 2 months after the collection came out, and I couldn't find it ANYWHERE. I became that obsessive polish fiend we now all know as "Amanda" ;) Alas, I didn't ever find it, until the fabulous Jamie sent it to me (love ya!) and the lemming was fulfilled. But not before a lot of other polishes came home with me...

So after a lot of taunting from my boyfriend ("oh, another one?" "wow, that's a lot of rainbow sparkle", etc.) I decided to put this collection to good use, and I swatched them all and will compare them so you can decide just which one is the perfect one... for you. For me, they're all perfect.

 (Ignore the smudged Sharpie, I was going to label them on the wheel but it would not cooperate. So I got creative and wrote the labels around a piece of paper). These are two coats of each in order of the bottles above: Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters, Sephora by OPI Spark-tacular, Claire's Bedazzled, Essence Circus Confetti, Ulta Pinata-yada-yada, Milani Gems, Nyx Carnival, and (the epic, the ultimate) Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday (yes, I broke down and bought it).

And here are some close ups in the same order: Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters, Sephora by OPI Spark-tacular, Claire's Bedazzled, Essence Circus Confetti below.

And the remaining four: Ulta Pinata-yada-yada, Milani Gems, Nyx Carnival, Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday.

And, not to be outdone, Dana actually pointed out one I was missing so I snatched this one up just before this went to presses: Confetti Tazmanian Devil:

So here's the rundown: All nine (!) of them have a clear base and a variety of glitter: either micro-glitter (small specks), small glitter (next size up), and regular glitter; either hex, round, or square in shape.

• Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters: Small red and green circular glitter, slightly larger green circular glitter, hex glitter in silver and light blue. Price: about $3-5 depending on the retailer (I forget what I paid exactly.)
• Sephora by OPI Spark-tacular: Multicolored micro-glitter, small pink, blue, orange round glitter, and sparse larger hex glitter in orange, pink, blue, green. Clearly different from the others because of the abundance of micro-glitter outweighing the hex/round glitters.  Price: $9.50
• Claire's Bedazzled: Multicolored micro-glitter, large red, orange, yellow, green and blue hex glitter. Price: $4.50 but can be combined with Claire's buy one get one half off special.
• Essence Circus Confetti: Sparse multicolored round micro-glitter, some multicolored small hex and round glitter, and large pink, orange, yellow, silver, blue and green hex glitter. Price: unknown, estimated about $2-5 but I got this in a swap and it's only readily available in Europe.
• Ulta Pinata-yada-yada: Small round multicolored glitter, red, pink, orange and yellow hex glitter. Dries a bit matte. Sparser glitter than the others, definitely meant as a top coat and not to be used on its own. Price: $5 in the old Ulta bottles, $6 in the new cylinder bottles.
• Milani Gems: Small round multicolored glitter, red (?), orange, green and silver hex glitter. Although this is usually hailed as the dupe for Happy Birthday, it doesn't have the light blue hex glitter. Older versions also don't include the pink hex. Price: unknown, I got this one in a swap also, but it's available from beautyjoint.com for about $5-7.
• Nyx Carnival: Small round multicolored glitter, pink, orange, silver, green, and light blue hex glitter. Price: about $3-4, also available through beautyjoint.com
• Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday: Small round multi-colored glitter, Pink, orange, yellow, green, light blue, silver hex glitter. Very dense compared to the others, only required one coat to compare to the others at two coats. Price: $18, or as part of the Get This Party Started set which is 3 polishes (Candy Shop, Forget You, Happy Birthday) for $42.
• Confetti Tazmanian Devil:  Like $OPI, it has a lot of microglitter which sets it apart. Multicolored small round glitter, pink, orange, yellow, green and light blue hex glitter. Dries matte, not as sparkly as the rest. Price: $2 at CVS

Whew! Okay, now that my vision is blurry from staring at swatches of these glitters, I'm going to rest haha. I hope you all enjoyed this comparison, but which one is your favorite and which ones do you own? Obviously, I own them all haha but my favorites are probably the ones without the microglitter, like DL Happy Birthday, WnW Party of Five Glitters, Claire's Bedazzled, and Essence Circus Confetti. Are there any questions left unanswered? I'm hoping the price points, glitter rundown, and swatches were helpful!

xoxo,
Amanda