Face-First

Here are the results, three weeks after having my permanent makeup redone.

One half of the whole (brow and eyeliner).

Just as promised, here’s a post re: my recent permanent makeup touch-up:

Arrived at Earleen Bennet’s new studio (Asheville Permanent Makeup) at 131 McDowell Street and instantly felt at home–the reception area was really nice and welcoming, and I was glad to see her poufy leopard-covered sofa that I remembered (and coveted!) from The Secret Spa location.

She took me into the treatment room and looked at my existing makeup. We talked about what I wanted this time (a little darker coloring), and Earleen took standard “before” photos. In short order, I was relaxing on the padded adjustable table (much like a dentist’s chair) with a comfy pillow tucked under my knees while Earleen prepped her equipment.

She numbed my eyebrows with a topical cream made to her specifications by a local pharmacy. After that took effect, she used a new needle to scratch through the skin of my eyebrows to ready the area to receive ink. Once she started working, I could tell that her new needle machine operated more smoothly and with less vibration than I felt several years ago–a definite improvement!

After eyebrows, Earleen numbed the area of my upper and lower eyelashes. Once the numbness seeped in, my eyelids felt uber-funky, sort of like windowshades pulled all the way down and tied to a brick. They were closed for business and my efforts to open them or blink them or command them in any way were not impressive. This is probably a good thing; no one needs to see a tattoo needle that up-close-and-personal!

Earleen worked her magic in a combination of three different shades of green designed to complement my eyes (hazel) and skin tone (fair). When she was done, I felt better than the first time I received permanent makeup; the process was easier and I knew what to expect. She took “after” photos for comparison and gave me a refresher course on caring for my new color.

I went home with the skin around my eyes beginning to sing “Ave Maria,” as they say in the gritty detective stories of 1930’s pulp fiction. Ouchy, but not unexpected. (I don’t know how it feels to other people, but it feels like a super-sunburn to me.) I took two Advil, applied a cold (damp, not wet!) compress to the area around my eyes and rested for a while. When I got up, the sunburn feeling had eased off considerably. 

The next morning, the skin around my eyes looked puffy and the inked areas (eyeliner and eyebrows) looked nearly black. This is absolutely normal–the “real” color is safe under a protective crust that forms over the tattoo. I had taken off two days from work, but I had an early appointment and some errands to run, so I camouflaged as much as possible with a ball cap and glasses. I still thought I looked a little weird–like I woke up with a bad hangover and had tried to hide the evidence with an overabundance of black eyeliner–but nobody seemed to pay any attention. (Either I didn’t really look bad at all, or else the nice people at Panera Bread have seen lots of hangovers!) 

By Sunday (I had the work done on Wednesday), the dark “crust” was flaking off (you can’t pick at it because of the risk of disturbing the new color) and I could see the real color. It looked fabulous, of course, and I was ready to go back to work and flaunt my face.

I keep thinking of Maori warriors and their elaborate facial tattoos; I wonder if they’d accept me into their brotherhood* now that I, too, have ritualistic designs inked on my face? Forget it–I already belong to a sisterhood of women warriors who choose to fight the battles of daily life with confidence-inspiring warpaint that doesn’t wash off…

*Maybe I should get in on that brotherhood, after all, since honorary members include Harvey Keitel in The Piano and Johnny Depp in Crybaby (okay, that’s a stretch, but a good one!). I just hope it excludes ear-chompin’ Mike Tyson–his face now looks like a beat-up ‘51 Mercury coupe whose owner could only afford flames on one side of the dented hood…

 

Tune-Up

So…I’m having my permanent makeup touched up on Wednesday. It’s been a couple of years and I’ve had a little fading (absolutely normal and to be expected–especially with facial tattoos since they’re exposed to sunlight so much of the time) and I *think* I’m ready to go a little darker now. I’ll either be under the topical numbing influence of LMX4 (a numbing cream with 4% lidocaine) from The Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy on Merrimon Avenue–they were nice enough to order it for me–or LMX5 (the new 5% lidocaine version of the cream) if it arrives in time from DERMAdoctor.com.

I’ll post my experience as soon as I’m done, and I may even twitter about it when I come up for air, so to speak. (If you’re not already twittering, visit www.twitter.com and start tweeting–it’s fun and it’s challenging to restrict yourself to a 140-character report at any given moment.) 

I’m looking forward to visiting Earleen’s new studio and seeing how the process may have changed in the past couple of years. I’m hoping my new motto will be “no pain with lidocaine!”

 

Best Face Forward (Part III)

So, after all the numbing cream and the whir of the needle, my permanent makeup was finally said and done. I looked in the mirror and had to laugh–I had gorgeously shaped and colored eyebrows and looked like I was wearing eyeliner, but the areas that received numbing cream were swelled and white against the new color. (If you’ve ever had your eyebrows waxed, you know what this looked like.) There was also some puffiness, but it looked like I had a cold or allergies.* As the numbing cream wore off, I began to feel like I had a really bad sunburn around my eyes. My eyes were also slightly dilated from the numbing cream, so I was winking and blinking in the light. I can’t say I was an attractive specimen at that moment, but I had high hopes for the future! 

The entire process, from arriving at Earleen’s office and being numbed, through all the inking, then time afterward for care instructions and general pulling-myself-together–took about two hours. Earleen gave me a care sheet and explained each step: I was to go home, put a cold (but not too wet) compress over my eyes and brows, and rest for a little while. I received an ointment (soothing and antibiotic) that I was to put on the new tattoos several times a day. The areas must be kept moist and clean–but you DON’T wash/scrub the area, or get any sort of chemical (saline solution for contacts or any hair color, etc.) near it. FYI: peroxide reacts with the ink and can turn the tattoo purple–yikes! After a couple of days you should be able to shower normally (get your face wet without worries), but you still need to be careful of the tattoo. The areas will begin to get “crusty” (yucky, but that’s what happens) because, in fact, you’ve created skin that has to heal by scabbing over. Keep the scabby areas moist and clean–BUT NO PICKING OR SCRATCHING! Doesn’t matter how crusty/itchy it gets, you don’t touch it! Picking at the crusty surface can cause an infection and/or remove some of the ink and make the tattooing uneven.

After about 4-5 days, the crustiness started flaking off of its own accord. I resisted picking at it (practically had to wear socks on my hands!) until it started curling up and falling off. After that, I helped a little, but the ink underneath was set and remained even. After a week, my new eyebrows and eyeliner seemed perfectly healed and no one could tell that I had done anything except give myself a fabulous new makeover. Which is exactly what I’d done, with a lot of help from Earleen Bennet.

About a month later, I went back to Earleen for another session (included in the cost of the procedure) and she went over everything again, making little hairstrokes in my eyebrows (unbelievably natural looking!) and filling in any areas that might have received less ink. This is an important step, because you don’t want to get too much color in the beginning, and you want to be able to make any corrections after the skin has healed.**

The bottom line? This procedure, for me, equals some of the best money I ever spent and some of the best pain I ever endured. It was, and has been, absolutely worth what it cost. I can shower or swim and still have “a face.” I get the flu and can still look vaguely human. Every morning, I wake up with makeup!

I know it sounds strange to some people: why do you need makeup? Don’t you ever want to be without it? Well…no. I like having enough eyebrow color to show expression. I like having my eyes more defined. I feel more like myself, somehow, with this added color. I still have my original eyebrows and eyelashes, but now they’ve got some colorful company to help them show up. Most of the people that have questioned my motives have been those lucky folks with plenty of natural coloring (dark eyebrows and lashes) and no, they don’t need this service. In fact, they want to wax off some of their excess color, but I had none to spare.

Whatever you think of tattoos and needles and makeup and “vanity”, I have to say that permanent makeup–applied by a true master of the craft like Earleen Bennet–has done wonders for me. It may not be for you, but you have to admire an artist who can fearlessly wield a needle right at a customer’s eye and make that customer feel like they’re the lucky one. Thanks, Earleen–you gave me something I thought I could never have: exterior color that matches my interior view of how things should have been.*** You improved on nature, and you improved my nature in the bargain!

* I went to the grocery store the next day and didn’t scare anyone, so it must have been okay. I could have gone back to work, as well, but enjoyed having a couple of days off to recover at home.

** Permanent makeup eventually fades, just like any tattoo. I will need touch-ups over time, but I know what to expect.

*** At age 17, Earleen Bennett lost her own mother to breast cancer. She now works with breast cancer survivors to recreate what this terrible disease took from them, including eyebrows, the look of eyelashes, and creation/touch-up of breast areola following mastectomies and/or breast reconstruction.