I’m so happy that you guys actually enjoy these work appropriate posts. The work appropriate theme is going to comprise a huge portion of a my posts for a while since I mostly write about the colors I’m currently wearing. : )

In any case, close to 1/4 of my collection are ‘work appropriate’ colors. You’d be surprised at how much variation there are in the classic professional looking colors. Nudes, taupes, pinks, and soft shades don’t have to be boring. I’m going to start a series of articles showcasing 3 of my favorite work appropriate colors from all my favorite brands. First up, Rescue Beauty Lounge.

I’m sure that no one will be shocked that Scrangie was the source of my lemmings for the following 3 colors.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Om is a strangely calming color, making the name very appropriate. Even so, it’s probably the most ’serious’ muted pink in my collection. This swatch is 3 coats of Om, 1 coat of Seche Vite.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Grunge is my stick-it-to-the-man color (Ohh hoo hoo I’m sitting in your meeting wearing a color called Grunge, ha!). It’s a serious business appropriate color but at the same time it’s very moody and edgy. This color came out a while ago but it fits perfectly into the current mushroomy grayed-out color trend.  Grunge looks creme 99.9% of the time but it actually has a whitish shimmer throughout. The shimmer is not highly light refractive which is why no one will ever see it. The danger of Grunge (and all similar mushroomy grayed-out colors like it) is that it may be a tough color to pull of successfully. Mushroomies seem to not flatter very pale skin tones and are seemingly more suitable to skin tones like my own. This swatch is 3 coats, 1 coat of Seche Vite.

Finally, Rescue Beauty Lounge Opaque Nude. Scrangie’s swatch (linked above) is a more accurate depiction of Opaque Nude’s bottle color. My swatch is darker due to lighting and my skin tone which brings out the ‘nudeness’ of this color. In my opinion, Opaque Nude is border-line business appropriate, perfectly okay for a less conservative office. I say this only because it might be too obvious. I feel like business appropriate colors have to be subtle, pretty but not necessarily noticeable and for most people this color will be very noticeable.

I was pretty excited when Zoya announced this promo. I really put a lot of thought into which colors I would choose. Primarily I wanted to choose colors that I personally liked but also had good application and weren’t very popular. I didn’t want to choose colors I know a lot of people already own since that would defeat the purpose of getting a free bottle of polish. So here they are:

Zoya Stephanie. Ok, I do love this color, but let’s face it, I’m biased because it’s my namesake. It’s a very chic almost white light pink. The downside is that the application can be troublesome. It’s a 4 coater if you want opacity. I apply it using Barielle Camo as a base, that fixed the streakiness issues for me.

Zoya Miley. Those of you who follow my blog know that lilac is one of my white whales, so I just had to include it in my mini-collection. Miley is also a 4 coater but the application is perfect even without Camo. It reminds me of my beloved Orly Bon bon, although I think Bon bon leans a bit more towards periwinkle. This picture shows Miley as being more bluish than it is in real life – sorry guys, I tried to get the color depiction as accurate as I could but it’s almost impossible to photograph purples accurately without sunlight.

Zoya Rea is just ridiculously gorgeous. Rea is metallic with a foil like finish. Perfect in two coats, smooth application, no visible brush strokes. It was my favorite color from the Downtown collection by far. (Sorry, Kotori and Suvi fans.) The color is hard to describe, Zoya says it’s sparkling metallic plum – I’d say pinkish-purple. Whatever, bottomline, I love it.

I realize my colors are a bit conservative so if you’re looking for something more exciting, check out Casual Lavish for a list of all the blogs participating in this promotion. There really is a mini-collection for everyone.

Misa – Indescribable is a dainty off white that leans towards pink, very chic. This color looks *beautiful* in the bottle. I can’t say the same for the end result on the nail. Misa Indescribable was fairly streaky so I had to resort to using Barielle Camo as a base. That helped a bit but not enough. It took about 4 coats to even out correctly. The color was really pretty for about a day, then the color started to darken – as if the polish was actually picking up dirt or something. I started off with an attractive (although difficult to apply) pinkish off white and ended up with a greyish yellowish off white. I had high hopes but this polish did not meet my expectations, very disappointing. (I apologize it seems like a lot of my opinions lately have been really negative.) To be fair, other people seem to really like Misa Indescribable so I don’t want to flat out say that I don’t recommend it. It’s entirely possible that someone else will have better luck with it than I did. If you own it, what do you think?

I know I’m in the minority when it comes to love for french manicures. I even like french for… *gasp*… pedicures, blasphemy, I know. In hopes of convincing more people to come to the dark side (rather the light pink and white side), I decided to do a series on the various types of french manicures. We’ll be looking at different polishes that can comprise the set as well as different application styles and looks. Today, we’re looking at, what is in my opinion, the quintessential french manicure: The Traditional Essie French Mani.

When it comes to demure, but sophisticated, nudes, pinks, and neutrals – Essie is the go-to brand. To me, Essie is also synonymous with french manis. I’ve tried several french mani combinations, nothing compares to the look you get with Essie Mademoiselle and Essie Marshmallow. Most people would refer to this combo as being an American French Manicure. (For an explanation for the differences between french mani styles check out this link.) The combo is soft and natural looking, definitely among my personal favorites but also widely popular with just about everyone who like french manis. Essie Pink Glove Service can also be used as a base color for a french mani but here I used it as the over-layer. Generally, I like flashy stark white tips but since I’m temporarily stuck in realm of professional looking manis, I decided to layer Pink Glove Service to dim Marshmallow a bit. I like the way it looks but ultimately I could have done without the extra PGS coat because Mademoiselle and Marshmallow look very professional all on their own.

As far as application: This is base coat plus one coat of Mademoiselle, perfectly smooth and even. Mademoiselle looks very pink in the bottle but applies translucent. I needed two coats of Marshmallow for the tips to look solid. I did this free hand so, as you can imagine, it was a huge pain in the butt. Stickers are great but they work best for the very patient. I find it easier to just do it free hand. Doing free hand correctly takes some practice but that’s better than fumbling with the stickers. The nail board wisdom tip for getting a good solid white tip is too move your finger instead of the brush, that’s also what works best for me.

First a personal update: I want to apologize to my loyal readers, I haven’t been updating often. I moved in with my family for the summer to do an internship. The way our internet was set up, I had to write all my articles in my 14 year-old little brother’s room. My brother spends all his time playing massive multi-player online games, which means all my articles had to be written to the tune of my brother screaming at his teammates on his headset. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I bought my family a wireless router. Now I can write in peace, expect more updates and please stick with me. ; )

And now for my thoughts on Orly Love Collection: NOT IMPRESSED. Generally, the colors have ok application, not streaky but almost none of the colors were flattering. Most of the colors are translucent at 2 coats, so if you’re like me and don’t like translucent colors, you’d need to use 4+ coats to get bottle color – but 4 coats = bubble hell.

On my eternal search for wearable off-whites, I had high hopes for Orly My Beau. It’s a white eggshell type color. It’s not unattractive per se but the yellow tones in it looked weird with my skin tone. This swatch is 4 coats, you can’t see the bubbles in the picture but I assure you that they are there.

At two coats, Orly Dream Boat would probably be a good french mani color. This swatch is 4 coats, same issues with bubbles. And again, it’s just not flattering for my skin tone.

Someone on MUA compared Orly Secret Admirer to a creamsicle, that’s the perfect description for this color. This swatch is 4 coats. Again, this collection just really wasn’t meant for people with my skin color.

Orly First Kiss was one of the fan favorites from this collection. It’s the only color from the Love Collection that I’ve worn as a mani. Again, the color, that I describe as a ‘dead’ pink for it’s lack of luster, did nothing for my skin tone. I wore it for 3 days and it still didn’t grow on me. I have seen people with lighter skin tones wear it very well but there are better light pinks out there for us darker girls. Using only two coats, it would probably work better for french manis, but why bother when you can get Essie Mademoiselle instead.

I actually don’t have anything negative to say about Orly Crush on You. It’s a great orange with great application, this swatch is 2 thick coats.

Orly Butterflies and Orly Crush on You are the two stand out colors from this collection. Butterflies had great application, the swatch is 2 thick coats. This hot pink is very vivid – both Butterflies and Crush on You are great colors for summer and spring.

These colors belong to collections (OPI Indian Collection and Essie In the Mood Collection, respectively) that came out roughly at the same time. Since these colors were among the first light grays on the easily accessible market, they are often compared to each other. As I told you guys before, I’ve been working at the State Attorney’s Office so I’ve been dipping into my professional-looking nail polish colors. However, we were discussing here last week whether gray nail polish can be acceptable in a professional environment – I decided to test my hypothesis. I wore Body Language today to court. First, no one cared about my nail polish, which is in no way surprising and completely expected. Second, Body Language looks NOTHING like OPI Moon Over Mumbai. Essie Body Language looks more like a creme grayed-out ultra light pink, almost like what I would expect Rescue Beauty Lounge Grunge to look like. OPI Moon Over Mumbai is a true light gray with very subtle shimmer, dupish to Essie Great Expectations which is also from the In The Mood Collection. I had a tough time with the application of both polishes, so one isn’t superior to the other in that aspect. Moon Over Mumbai is ultra streaky. My bottle of Body Language was really thick so it was difficult to even out coats. (Yes, I know, I should thin it, but I’m still a little scared of thinners.) This image is a good representation of what the color looks like even though it was taken in the shade. Sadly, I’m getting home from work too late to take day time pics – I promise, I’m working on it.

Below is Moon Over Mumbai and Body Language juxtaposed. The images were taken in different lighting at different times but both are accurate depictions of the colors.

Finally, here are the two bottles.

I have been endlessly searching for a perfect wearable off-white. Most are unacceptable to me because the colors are either too streaky, too white, or too off-white leaning towards pink. After a lot of searching and a lot of duds, I finally found the perfect off-white: OPI Time-Less is More from the Beyond Chic, 2008’s Soft Shades Collection. I was pretty excited about Beyond Chic before it came out, even though no one else seemed to be into the collection. In an effort to be less extravagant in my polish purchases, I successfully talked myself out of getting the whole collection. I own a lot of soft pinks and one of the lovely girls on MUA RAOK’d me a white with gold shimmer, thereby negating my need for the 2 white with gold shimmer polishes from Chic Shades. But, in a moment of weakness, I finally gave in for Time-less is More. I’m really glad I did. My only complaint is that it took 3 to 4 coats to achieve bottle color, but that’s to be expected with colors like this. I didn’t have much streakiness trouble with Barielle Camo as a base. Scrangie has pictures of the whole collection up on her blog (as usual), so check it out over there. Thanks to her, I now officially want the whole collection again – too bad I’m on a major-hardcore-for-real-no-breaking-this-time-no-buy.

In other news, I wrote a mini-dictionary for the site, the Lacquer Lexicon. If you ever find that you have no clue what I’m talking about shoot me an email or comment so I can clarify in the Lexicon. Additionally, I’m starting a serial segment where I answer nail polish related questions. If you guys ever need any advice about anything nail related let me know, If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find it out for you, also feel free to send me pictures of unidentified polishes or color comparison requests. I’m going to get to the questions and requests I’ve gotten recently very soon, scout’s honor! : )

As always, I think this depends on what kind of job you have and how flexible towards fashion your job happens to be. Another consideration is whether a color is socially acceptable. I suppose, when it comes to professional-looking nail polish, there are two schools of thought. The first, I call the Essie school. The Essie school of thought holds that only nude, natural, neutral, or light pink is appropriate for work. The other, Vampy School holds that darks are also fine for work as long as the colors are not overly outrageous (dark browns, reds, plums would be ok whereas bright purple or black would not be) and the mani is clean and professional looking. For the most part, I belong to the Vampy school. Even so, I think grey is a new enough color trend that it might still strike some people as being bizarre. I’ve heard a lot of people compare it to having corpse-like nails, etc. I probably wouldn’t wear any of the dark greys to work. However, light greys like OPI Moon Over Mumbai (pictured to the left) or the similar Essie Body Language are very professional and sleek looking. Both should be acceptable for most work environments.

What do you guys think? Is grey a go or no go at work?

(As a side note: It’s sad but starting next week, because of my internship, I’ll be wearing very conservative polishes for the rest of summer, weekends excluded. So Expect to see a lot of work related nail polish articles and comparisons of work friendly colors. T_T Boooo.)