Lacquer Slacker Liz: Pretty Jelly Sweet Trip to Honeydukes

Friday, March 2, 2018

Pretty Jelly Sweet Trip to Honeydukes

Sweet Trip to Honeydukes was created by Liz of Illinois-based indie polish maker Pretty Jelly especially for the February 2018 "Sugar Rush" edition of Polish Pickup. This polish was inspired by the legendary wizarding sweets shop from the Harry Potter film series, and is described as "a deep mint green holographic with peach shimmer and hot pink sparkle."

The base color is a cool, translucent, medium-toned shade of Paris green. The degree of translucence creates luminosity and allows the color to be easily influenced by its components, giving it a certain malleable complexity on the nail. Holographic properties nuance the base with aspects of blue-green in ambient light. Abundant fine pink-to-gold color-shifting shimmers combine with it to give it a dusky quality, and create a swath of golden peachy-pink along the axis of light. Tiny, reflective bright pink microflakes emit a stealthy sparkle as light travels over them.

Application was buenísimo! The consistency of Sweet Trip to Honeydukes is fluid and full-bodied with a medium-to-slightly-thicker viscosity that I added a bit of polish thinner to at the outset. Thinned, it had a fluent, even, self-leveling slip over the nail that was a pleasure to finesse with the brand's flattened-style brush. Pigmentation is sheerish. Three coats delivers full opacity and bottle color. Cleanup is easy. Sweet Trip to Honeydukes dries naturally in very good time to a smooth, shiny finish. Topcoat accentuates the presence and effects of the components.

Photos show three coats of Sweet Trip to Honeydukes over treatment and basecoat with a topcoat of Seche Vite. It was heavily overcast and raining today when I took these and they are not as sharp as I would have liked them to be, my apologies. On the plus side, though, you can more easily traces of the sparkly pink microflakes when they're blurred.

Pretty Jelly Sweet Trip to Honeydukes

Everything about this polish speaks to the diversity, creativity and uniqueness of indie polish making -- it's literally a perfect example of what I love most about indie polish makers and their offerings. The resonant inspiration of Honeydukes is creatively rendered in the color and components, which combine to create a unique look that is beautiful in its own right, complex, unconventional and, above all, eminently wearable.