My friend Nancy from Beauty 411 is what you might call a Chanel connoisseur. She knows the makeup line inside and out and every season she is first in line to take home her favorite pieces from the collection, especially the nail colors.

When pictures first surfaced of a silver metallic Chanel nail polish from backstage at Paris Fashion Week, Nance was the first person to ask me about it on Twitter. At the time, the images I saw didn’t wow me. Another foil metallic, how original.

I told her I didn’t expect Chanel Graphite to be anything special and even after I could see it in person I was feeling kind of “meh” about it. Well, now you get to watch me eat my words.

As much as I believe that you never get the whole nail polish story until you see the juice on the nail, I love looking at bottle images. One of my favorite things about scrolling through Tumblr posts is when I stumble across a great bottle shot. So I started photographing my collection, in bottles, by brand, with the intention of eventually posting them in my gallery.

FYI, my gallery hasn’t allowed me to upload photos for a year and that’s why it isn’t updated. I haven’t found a fix or a better gallery solution which is why it remains unchanged since April 2010. It’s not that I’m neglecting it.

Anyway, I decided to start with Chanel, going color drawer by color drawer though my Helmers. I’ll be posting the pics on my Tumblr in the meantime so if you want to follow along, subscribe to my account over there.

I started with my white, black, gray and silver drawers and that inspired me to finally try Chanel Pearl Drop. Pearl Drop seemed to be the forgotten child in the Spring 2011 collection as Black Pearl garnered all the buzz so I was curious to see if it would end up being a sleeper hit.

“I wore a pink and I liked i-it! I hope my polish friends don’t mind it.” I’ve been blasting Katy Perry in my polish room all day so while I was applying today’s 365 of Untrieds color, my altered version of that lyric created an earworm that I can’t seem to get rid of.

The point is, I am wearing pink nail polish today and I don’t hate it. SPOILER ALERT - I’m actually kind of in love with it.  I suppose that ruins the whole stash/share verdict for today but I hope you’ll keep reading to see why I’m so smitten with Chanel Morning Rose.

Of course, when Chanel makes a yellow, everyone’s eyes light up.  Remember the craze that Chanel L.A. Sunrise created in 2008 when the Robertson Boulevard collection launched?  This time around the buzz has been building over Chanel Mimosa from the Summer 2011 Les Fleurs d’Ete de Chanel collection.

Les Fleurs d’Ete or Flowers of Summer makes me say, in my best Miranda Priestly impression, “Florals? For spring? Ground breaking.” Yes, we’re talking summer and not spring but still.  Haven’t we beaten that horse to the point that PETA is about to step in?  Then again, there must be a reason florals keep coming back. Let’s see if Chanel can prove why.