I've come to refer to myself as a human pincushion. I have this ridiculous addiction to body modification. My body is currently home to 25 piercings & 5 tattoos - with no signs of stopping, might I add. Out of those 25 piercings, 8 have been DIY. I don't recommend DIY piercing because it's very easy to screw it up & harm yourself, but I also understand what happens when the piercing bug bites. If you choose to DIY, please make sure you have the correct needles / jewelry / etc & you have done your research.
At A Glance Author L. Contact skittlici0us@yahoo.com When It just happened Artist Me Studio My Bed Location Dorm - BSC Moving on!
As I mentioned before, I'm no stranger to DIY piercing. I have several ear piercings that were done the stupid way (ex: safety pins, old piercing studs, sewing needles, etccccc), but I finally smartened up (in a way?) & bought myself some real piercing needles. I had originally bought them to do my tongue web (a story I'm sure you'll see on here eventually) & have since used them to do more damage to myself.
I was relaxing in my dorm room tonight - and by relaxing, I mean I was stuck inside due to some crazy snow storm we had (stupid New England!) - with a friend of mine & was browsing BME as usual. I was looking at navel piercings & realizing how much I missed the triple navel I had retired last semester due to one side rejecting. I considered redoing it until I realized that I had lost one of the barbells because I'm just a complete disaster & I'd lose my head if it wasn't attached to my damn shoulders. I continued browsing & saw several pictures of standard & inverse navels together. Slowly the wheels in my head began turning...
I brought up the idea to my friend - who is just as piercing addicted as I am - & she encouraged me to do it. Now, this is where I become your typical lazy & stupid college kid. I reached over to my jewelry box & grabbed one of my pre-packaged 14g hollow needles. I then dug around a bit more & produced a plain stainless steel barbell leftover from my prior triple navel. I had cleaned it after I originally took it out, but found myself far too lazy to get up & clean it again. Yes, I suck sometimes, it's fine.
I didn't even bother marking my stomach, I just eyeballed it. When I mark things, I never seem to hit the mark anyway, so I figured why not. I took the jewelry out of my standard navel & placed the needle at what I wanted to be the entrance point. As I guided the needle through - slowly, mind you, I'm a bit of a wuss with pain & can never get myself to just shove a needle through when piercing myself - I kept the end of the needle lined up as closely with my standard piercing to *hopefully* get it as straight as possible.
I felt absolutely no pain. I also had Family Guy distracting me at the time, so that might have taken my mind off the fact that I was carelessly shoving a needle into my stomach. The skin was quite the bugger to get through, especially since I was lacking clamps. The only reason why the needle even went through was because I laughed at something on Family Guy & must have crunched my stomach a bit because next thing I knew, the needle was completely through.
My friend glanced up from her computer to ask how everything was going & I told her the needle was through. She looked a tad shocked, then just shook her head & returned to most likely stalking around on Craigslist (yes, we are those kids).
I grabbed my barbell & threaded the end through the needle as I pulled the needle out. Success! The barbell was happily in place...With lots of blood. Please don't let that scare you, by the way, I just tend to be a bleeder. I grabbed tissues to clean up the piercing enough so I could screw the other ball on. Success again! I was shocked & amazed that I had actually done it. It looks pretty good - a little swollen & the bottom hole is a smidge crooked, but I'm still pretty proud of my work.
Moving hurts a bit, so I've been moving much like a pregnant woman since I did it. The redness / swelling has gone down a little, but it appears that the barbell may be a tad too short. I'll have to keep an eye on it in the morning. I did a nice hot sea salt soak & put a little Bacitracin on there & have been sitting with my shirt hiked up so it doesn't rub my new little baby. Sleeping will prove to be interesting tonight since I'm a stomach sleeper, haha.
Thanks for reading my novel of an experience. Good luck & happy piercing!!
(Oh & feel free to email me with any questions. You can also IM me on AIM - SuperRadLi)