So all you want to know about is the experience, right? Here it is...
At A Glance Author GarbageDoll Contact cinnamonspider@turnmywaterblack.fsworld.co.uk When Three months ago Artist Ellen Studio Blue Banana Location Coventry, England After a few months of research here on BME and around the internet I decided I was ready to get my next piercing: an anti eyebrow.
I have 10 other piercings (nostril, labret, conch, transverse lobes, x 3 pairs of lobes with some stretching) and am always looking for something beautiful and unique. like most other people here, I like to fully research my piercing before I commit to having it done. I've had spur of the moment piercings before, and the whole experience has just been a complete pain in the ass (lip piercing...on the first day of a festival, for example - d'oh!).
I had been thinking of a piercing around the area of my eyes, as I feel they are my best feature and wanted to highlight them. I don't like eyebrow piercings on women, and didn't feel it was a piercing for me. Then I came across the 'Anti Eyebrow' while scurrying through the archives here.
Some people have joked about it being the rebels eyebrow piercing...the whole 'anti' thing...yeah, I didn't think it was funny either. Anyway...
It was the day after my 18th birthday. I went into the city to do some shopping with my new found wealth when I decided to pop into blue banana. I've had a couple of piercings done there before and found them more than qualified, and I trust them more than my local piercers - nothing like a bad experience to make you realise, eh? (nostril with a gun!)
I asked if they did many surface piercings and told the girl what I wanted to get.
She said she could do it, told me how much it would cost and said I should go for it...I chickened out and said I would go back later.
So I wondered around for about an hour until I got the nerve to go back. I guess I have freak out moments before I get pierced, and have to re-talk myself into doing it. Anyway, the guy saw me wondering about the shop and came to ask me what I was worried about. So we had a chat about pain, scarring, what was stopping me etc and he showed me a couple of his surface piercings and told me about his experiences.
I agreed to get it done, and filled out the various forms. We decided on an 8mm, 1.6g curved blue barbell and away it went to be autoclaved. I sat around for a while reading various magazines and talking to parents of/and other people getting pierced (everyone talks to me for some reason, but I'm not complaining, its nice not to be scary sometimes!)
So the jewellery was ready and I hopped up onto the bed. After some fiddling about with positions, I decided to go for the left hand side of my face, about half an inch under my eye. The bar would start below the corner of my eye and lie inwards, finishing up under the center-ish of my eye...if you get me (horizontally) its hard to explain really. There are some pictures on my website (www.garbagedoll.tk)
She did the piercing freehand and it went very smoothly. There was minimal pain, no where near unbearable! It was more of a pinch really. I bled and bled some more, had a look in the mirror and fell in love. It was perfect! No adrenaline rush though, which was disappointing.
I thanked the piercer, she gave me cleaning instructions and informed me that it would grow out eventually and off I went. I showed the rest of the staff who were all pretty impressed, if I do say so myself, and agreed to come back for some photographs when the bleeding and swelling had stopped.
Damn good birthday present if you ask me!
I got some odd looks walking around...and aside from the metal in my face I wondered why. I realised, when I got home, that I had developed a black eye. A very, very nice 'black' (more purple really) eye.
Never mind. I went out that night, and got hundreds of comments. Most of them being 'my god, did that hurt!' but all of them good.
The next few days my eye yellowed, and the bruise went away within about a week.
It healed perfectly - it didn't crust, bleed, hurt at all...I couldn't even feel it about an hour after the initial piercing. I used the usual things for cleaning – sea salt soaks, occasional diluted TCP washes. sleeping over the first few days made it bleed, as I sleep on my side, but I learned to sleep at a weird angle to stop irritating it!
I would definitely recommend this piercing to anyone, as long as you can handle the questions and stares every day! Oh, and getting used to washing and hair is difficult at first...