My horizontal surface eyebrow piercing
At A Glance Author Courtney Contact Courtney@bme.anon When A month ago Artist Blair Studio Ballistics tattoo studio Location Auckland, New Zealand
After meeting a very good friend of mine who is heavily into body piercing (particularly surface), and then being introduced to BME I have slowly grown a large interest in body piercing.
Although I don't have a large amount of piercings (4 non ear) when I decide on a piercing I am now beginning to choose piercings that are different or a little less ordinary, I find them interesting and a little more attractive. I already knew for around 5 months beforehand that I wanted my eyebrow pierced but after exploring the large variety of different styles I found it hard to choose! I had narrowed it down to either a standard ring on the outer side, a small horizontal bar bell on the outer side or a longer, standard surface barbell horizontally along the inner side of my eyebrow. I gave it a lot of thought and asked a few friends opinions too and then decided I liked the inner surface style because it was very different.
Because I live in New Zealand there were not many piercers I would trust with this style of piercing as the body mod society here is quite small and mostly consists of your common, regular piercings. I decided to go to Blair at Ballistics as I was already familiar with him, he did my tongue and vert labret not long before he had also done my friends surface neck piercings (his first surface piercings), and he had done a very good job.
I showed him the picture and he was confident about the piercing. I trust him completely, he is very strict when it comes to detail and keeping everything clean and sterile. He placed the equipment in the sterilising machine and then asked me to sit down as he cleaned my eyebrow and marked two small dots on my eyebrow, I then checked it and decided I wanted one end lower, he cleaned it, remarked it and we were ready to go!
While we were waiting for the equipment to be ready I noticed Blair was pretending to be piercing someone on the bench from different angles (there was no one there!), I found it quite entertaining watching him act it out and asked him what on earth he was doing, he then replied, "I'm just finding out which direction will be easier to pierce you from" and then carried away with what he was doing. We both agreed that we thought it would be easier and more comfortable for us if I were lying down. At this point there quite a few people in the shop and all very interested in what I was having done, I didn't mind, I quite liked the attention!
Although I don't really have a phobia of needles, the thought of having one near my eye freaked me out! I asked Blair if he would pierce my eyebrow in the direction away from the centre of my face and he said that would be fine.
As I lay down he asked me if I was nervous and looked very surprised when I said, "no, not really" he then jokingly replied "I would be!" I think the reason I wasn't too nervous was because I hadn't thought about the process very much or the fact that this piercing was more extreme then any others I have.
Blair asked me to wiggle my eyebrow around a little; he said this was to make sure he wasn't going to pierce near any nerves. He then clamped my eyebrow, and I'll be honest this hurt a lot! Because the skin there is so tight and it was a long length to cover from each end of the barbell it took him a little while of fiddling to get all the skin together. This was when I got nervous, after the pain of the clamp I didn't know how bad the needle would be! He then asked me to close my eyes, try to relax a take a deep breath and then in went the needle. The pain of the needle was around the same as the clamp only it was a sharper pain, unlike the dull constant pain of the clamp. Next he removed the clamp waited a few seconds and slid through the bar, he said it would be uncomfortable but I would say it hurt, and more then I had expected. My friend was squeezing my toes to distract me, it worked!
After he screwed the other ball on and cleaned the area, he asked me to wiggle my eyebrow a little and then let out a "Phew!" I then looked in the mirror while my friend cringed at the idea of the pain and having it done (this surprised me after all the 6 neck and chin piercings she has had!) I got a few looks and stares from the people in the shop and then later out on the street. I liked my piercing from the first moment I saw it but it took a day or so to get used to seeing it in the mirror.
For the first few days there was a little swelling and it did ache a little but that disappeared fairly quickly. It has now been 3 weeks since that day and I have had no problems and it is healing up well.
Blair made this a wonderful experience for me and I now consider him to be my regular piercer with my future plans. Although it hurt a little to have pierced I would still do it all over again! It was worth it and I am very happy with it!