I ignored the gray trend as long as I could.  Gray... feh.  But finally I'm on the bandwagon.  Gray is chic.  And beautiful.  And moody.  I can put on my big girl pants and admit that all of you were right- gray rocks.

I decided to grab five grays, from light to dark.  On my thumb is the most recent gray I've obsessed over- Orly's Mirror Mirror from the fall 2009 Once Upon a Time collection.  In the bottle, you can see swirls of black pigment that haven't mixed in well with the rest of the polish.  There's also a bit of white pigment hovering on the bottom of the bottle, too.  Instead of thinking about the pigment not mixing super well, I prefer to look at it as art.  I thought that Mirror Mirror was a bit runny at first, but it turned out to be surprisingly opaque after the first coat dries.  To be on the safe side, I did do another coat for a total of two coats.

On my index finger is Essie's Great Expectations.  Great Expectations is a very light, pearly gray in the bottle.  It barely has any gray tinge on the nail, but it might be a good gateway gray for those who just want to dip a toe into the gray trend.  I would recommend using a tip color under this polish because I could see the flaws in my nail tip through the four layers of polish I put down.  Great Expectations is from Essie's Spring 2008 collection, so it was limited edition.  I have seen it pop up at TJ Maxx recently for the nice price of US$3.99.

On my middle finger is MAC's limited edition On the Prowl nail polish from this year's Hello Kitty collection.  The bottle is oh so cute with the Hello Kitty on it!  Allegedly On the Prowl could be duped by Milani's Day Dreaming, but the Milani was almost equally hard to find, if not harder to find, than the MAC polish!  I had to let On the Prowl dry between polish coats.  I ended up doing three coats total because it seemed like the brush was dragging away the polish in some areas.

On my ring finger is China Glaze's Recycle.  It came out with an eco-themed collection last year (I think), but it's part of the regular ChG lineup now.  I felt like Recycle was very slightly more warm than the other grays I swatched.  It was also runny, too.  I ended up doing three coats, though a thin coat and then a thick coat might have worked just as well.

The darkest of the grays I swatched was Barry M's Grey, which I put on my pinkie.  It was almost totally opaque with the first coat!  I did two coats anyway, but I was really impressed with this polish.  Plus I love the square bottles.  Looks like Grey's part of the core Barry M collection, along with some other great colors.

As usual, these are no topcoat and no basecoat swatches.  I'm holding Sephora by OPI's Run With It!, an odd, warm gray with almost antique gold gray shimmer.  The polishes are, from thumb to pinkie, Orly Mirror Mirror, Essie Great Expectations, MAC On the Prowl, China Glaze Recycle, and Barry M Grey.  They look slightly similar in the pictures, but Mirror is just a little more blue and a little lighter versus On the Prowl; On the Prowl is just a smidge more yellow and a little darker versus Mirror.  The first two pics are in blazingly full sunlight, while the second two are under artificial light.

Here's hoping this love of gray doesn't lead me to RBL grays...