I'd been to Andy Jay's a couple of times before, so it wasn't a first for me. I'll always recommend them for any type of piercings. The guy who does them is a genius, and an absolute love. Never had a bad word to say about him so far. I really do need to find out his name (I think it's Mike, but I can't be certain). He's the one one who does any piercing, from what I can tell.
At A Glance Author Kay Contact Kay@bme.anon When Six months ago Studio Andy Jay's Location Chatham, Kent Anyway...
I have a long list of piercings that I am going to get, but having a rather overbearing Mother, I am unable to get most of them until I move out of my house. I was browsing the internet and came across pictures of Snug piercings. I immediately decided to get the piercing, as I felt that an ear piercing would be the least offensive piercing I could get.
The next day I made my way down...
I took one of my best friends down with me, as she had seen the piercings I'd had done there before and wanted one from Andy Jay's herself. She had a neck piercing done straight after my Snug was done, but anyway... I walked in, and thankfully he didn't have anybody waiting. I told him what I wanted, he looked over my ear cartilage to check if the Snug would look good, he handed me a pen, and I marked where I thought the Snug would look nice. We made a couple of adjustments to the placing, and once we were both happy, we began.
He started by cleaning and freezing the area to be pierced, and, after about 10 hours of stuff dripping down my neck (no joke. It takes FOREVER to freeze the cartilage when it's that thick) he sat me back and started the piercing. The guy who does the piercings is wonderful. He's so talkative, and he sets you at ease the second you walk into the room. He also explains every single thing that he does if you want to know, and he is perfectly happy to give you advice or explanations.
God, I have never felt anything as painful in my life.
And I mean it.
I thought my ear was being ripped apart.
Thankfully, I lived through it. Before we started the piercing, we had a discussion about the size of bar that I wanted. My cartilage in the place I wanted pierced was obviously going to swell up. I could have had it pierced with an 8mm bar, but when the area became swollen I may have had problems with the bar being too short, so I agreed to have the bar at 10mm. I was extremely glad that I did this.
The piercing was lovely until it started swelling up. The ear doubled in size - no joke. And sleeping on it... Christ, that hurt. I tend to play with my piercings and this caused me a great deal of trouble with this snug. It wept an awful lot, being where it was, and because I sleep on the side whenever I woke up in the morning it would have bled during the night and gunk would be plastered all over me. Even more annoyingly, after the swelling went down, because the bar was too large for the ear, the piercing STILL wouldn't heal because the bar kept moving around and wouldn't heal. I really needed to change the bar, but was really stupid and went and bought a bar from a shop and tried to change it myself. I can't do up the bars, so I kept losing the balls as I slept or when I went out, and the bar used to come halfway out and I'd have to force it back through the hole again. Not a pretty feeling on a fresh piercing.
However, this was solved when, 6 weeks after the piercing, I gave up trying to put in bars myself and went back to the studio and got them to put in one of their own 8mm bars (in green, I add. Very pretty.)
6 months on, it's still not fully healed and it can still hurt it someone smacks me in the ear when I'm not expecting it, but it looks absolutely gorgeous. I love the placement, and I love how straight and wonderfully it has been pierced. I still play with it and try and pick stuff out from it, but now the bar fits it seems to be healing far better than it did before. Unfortunately, I seem to have started a trend at my workplace for Snug piercings since I had it done. Oops.
I would never, ever go to another piercist. Andy Jay's is the King :D And the pain was well worth it.