I received these nail polishes from my 3 lovely ladies, they are all different brands, and totally different colors, but shall put them all into the same entry anyway.

The brand new Deborah Lippmann I bought it for S$25 from dearshopaholic -- I had purchased THREE of these during my US trip, but I didn't get any for myself.  Talk about the irony!  :)  and now it seems I am fated to be Across the Universe... hahaha.

And the essence nail polish is gifted by Kim, during her recent KL trip, judging from the pictures she showed us of the essence stuff, I know I will be checking out their products when I go to KL this September.  It is a lovely taupe color which she knows is right up my alley.... and the name of the polish is Walk of Fame.

And the last color is by OPI, from the Miss Universe collection.  I haven't been paying much attention to OPI releases lately, but the color of this nail polish just attracted me --- It's MY year, and it seems like a lovely color, so I got Jerlaine to CP it for me when she went to PNC recently.   It costs $12.  It's a shimmery purple nail polish, think lots of fine golden glitter in a semi-opaque purple base.

Swatches of each color as follows:

Across the Universe is a glitter paradise, like all the Deborah Lippmann gltter ones are.  This is due to the varying sizes of the glitter bits inside the polish, and in this one, the glitter bits are a combination of blue, greens and I think I see some light blue ones too, depending on the light.  Together with the fine glitter bits, the overall appearance is very textured, and shiny whenever the different glitter bits catch the light.  The base color is a blacken blue, semi opaque.  You don't have to try to hard to paint the glitter bits on your nails, because they are so densely packed in the polish itself.  Two even coats will give you 90% full on color, but I would paint one coat of something like Chanel's Blue Satin or Esste Lauder's Blue Dahlia as a base, and finish with one coat of Across the Universe.  This will guarantee instant full color payoff, and it might help the removal process to be easier too.

Here in my swatch, I applied 2 thick coats of the polish, I did not wait for each layer to dry, which explains the streaky/ patchy appearance of the base color.

It's MY Year is a warm toned purple with gold bits, again the base color is on the sheer side, if you like full opaqcity, you might want to apply a base color first, or else, 3 or 4 coats would give you the true color.   My pictures don't do the shimmery pretty gold bits any justice though.  In real life, they are more golden, and reminds me of MAC's Trax eyeshadow.

Kim knows my 'type' of color, it's really funny... :)  So I shall do a comparison of some of the almost dupes in my stash.

The formula is smooth, and a little on the thick side, so 2 thin coats give full color payoff.  Though it probably looks more like quite thick in my pictures, again, note, these are still semi-wet nail polish.  Also, this color dries darker -- on my nail wheels, it looks considerably darker than in the bottle show.

As you can see, these taupe colors I have [not all, only pulled out those that I think might resemble the colors], it is a matter of how much

red tones, brown tones, purple tones, grey tones

that makes the subtle differences among each other.

I swatched 2 colors which I thought might look similar...

That's all, and thanks for looking!!