Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday dupes: a comparison

After purchasing the new drugstore version of Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday (Confetti Tasmanian Devil) at CVS the other day, I thought it would be interesting to see how all of the drugstore versions of Happy Birthday that I own compare to each other.

 Left to right: Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters (retail: $1.99), Confetti Tasmanian Devil (retail: $1.99), Milani Gems - original version (retail: $4.99) and Milani Gems - newer version (retail: $4.99)

For purposes of this post, I'll refer to the two Milani Gems polishes at "1.0" and "2.0" since Milani changed a few of the glitter shades in the newer version of this polish.

For these first swatches, I used multiple layers of each polish on a clear background. Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters is still a bit sparse even after several coats, because the clear base in this polish is pretty watery overall. As you can see, all three of the other polishes are pretty much opaque. I lost count but I think I used five coats for all of the polishes in the above swatches.

Here's a closer look at each one:

 Wet n Wild

Party of Five Glitters

 Confetti

Tasmanian Devil

Milani Gems 1.0

Milani Gems 2.0

For the above swatches, I painted the "nails" with an opaque white, and then used just ONE layer of each glitter polish, so that you can see the glitter detail of each polish.

Here's a closer look at each one:

 Wet n Wild

Party of Five Glitters

I think this Wet n Wild polish is probably the most straightforward of the four, in terms of the combination of glitter. The glitter is more sparse in this polish than the rest, but I honestly think it's VERY close to the combination of glitter in Milani Gems 2.0, just less dense.

 Confetti

Tasmanian Devil

  

Tasmanian Devil is the only polish of the four to contain silver micro-glitter in addition to larger pieces of glitter. I think this adds such a festive look to this polish--I absolutely LOVE it. It feels like a confetti party exploded on my nails!

 Milani Gems 1.0

If you were lucky enough to buy Milani Gems before they changed the color combination, you know that this polish is truly a Gem. The colors are that of gemstones (ruby, sapphire, emerald) and if you scroll back up to the swatch taken after five coats, you'll see that it really looks like you've got gemstones on your nails when you wear this one (the green-tinged base helps with that effect as well).

 Milani Gems 2.0

I think that Milani Gems 2.0 is much closer to Deborah Lippmann Happy Birthday, because it now has pink and purple glitter. I think this one's the closest of the four to Happy Birthday (take a look at Kelly's swatches to see what I mean).

Also, I want to mention that when I was talking to Krissy about this on Twitter the other day, she was curious if Confetti Tasmanian Devil was a closer dupe to Happy Birthday than Milani Gems. I immediately thought of Milani Gems 1.0 when I answered back, "I think Tasmanian Devil is closer", so apologies, Krissy--I totally forgot about Milani Gems 2.0 which I think is the clear winner for best dupe of Happy Birthday (with Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters coming in second). You can check out Krissy's dupe comparison post of Happy Birthday and Gems here.

Tasmanian Devil isn't even in the running really, because of all that silver micro-glitter. But man, it's SO pretty that I think it might be my favorite of the bunch. If you're a glitter gal, definitely keep your eyes peeled for this one at CVS!

Some of the products featured in this post were sent to nouveaucheap.blogspot.com for previous reviews. Other polishes were purchased with personal funds.