Stretched ears on a shoestring!
At A Glance Author clarabella* Contact plasmaticdesigns@yahoo.co.uk IAM clarabella* When N/A Artist me, myself and irene The first time that I ever saw stretched ears were in I think in '94. That when the great unwashed descended into our town for a music festival called the Feile. If you can imagine it, this town- Thurles is really small, yet we had 'rage against the machine' play here. One day black France's from 'the pixies' went busking outside the AIB bank, the crash test dummies, to many to write! Anyway I was pretty young and my parents let out our bedrooms to a band and to more people up for the festival. There were tree hugging hippies and old school punks staying here. Id never seen anything like it, the piercing's, the hair and after much debate I was allowed venture into town with my big sister where selling pipes I saw this person with big stretched ears, being so young and naïve I remember looking at the pipes with feigned interest, telling the guy how my dad always has a pipe in his mouth... 'maybe I'll be back later for one' - to see his piercing, not having a clue that these pi pes has anything to do with smoking draw or that I would have many in the future!!
Plastic cups, all the bog hippies and old school metallers and punks, why did they seem so real so unlike the bubblegum black boys that are everywhere now...maybe its nostalgia..........
Anyway I bought two enlarging crescents about 2.4-6mm in size. I had considered getting a dermal punch but buying the crescents was cheaper and I could use them later on the rest of the holes in my ears!
Starting off was the hardest. It helps if you have a stud that about 1.6mm instead of normal earrings in your ears before you start off!
I thought that I would never get the crescents to twirl the whole way around and had the problem of the slipping off in my sleep and having to start the whole painful process again! Then one morning I woke in agony, and with a bloody mess of a pillow! I had dragged one most of the way around and the right lobe a little further. Oh the joy was unreal! Not just because I was nearly at my goal of 6mm for each ear but because I could twist the crescents and hid the behind my ear. They look a little bit too much like hoped earrings, which I really hate!
After about a week I got bored, I wanted to get bigger lobed but was to broke to send off for any claws or anything so I took the sliver cone shaped tops off my glitter gel pens and shoved them into my lobes. I left these in for about another week or two, it was a tiny squeeze but then end of the week they were already loose, well I could take they out the other end, I think constantly pulling at them helps. It's a little problem I have with piercings! Anyway at that stage they were maybe 8mm. still too small.
I started searching my room for stuff and found a red and black 'zebra dirfit gel' pen and the top of them were really pretty on. Roll on 11mm!
But the 'piece de resistance' of all was this big chunky pen I found with about 2 inches of hard rubber in the body. I cut it out then up but both tunnels I made were two big even with the help of some Vaseline, but by folding the width over and squeezing into the ear it slowly unfolds as the ear gets stretchier! That was about 11/12mm. just days after that I used the clear rubber body off the'zebra dirfit gel' pen and got to 13mm. I found that the things that are used to plug in TV aerials can make good tunnels as the wildcat catalogues have a really handy size chart you can measure your 'tunnels' and 'plugs' off for whn you can actually afford to send of and buy the real thing! My friend has a garage so I have these car pieces now that make really nice and heavy tunnel's! I'm not really sure what they are for but if you fill them with fimo use can make really nice plugs!
At the moment my ear-lobes are about 15mm in diameter but I reckon I can stretch to 16 before I head for a pint on Saturday night you see I'm starting to get bored already, I want to go a little bigger because my ears seem to be stretching so easily and painlessly, but I'm trying not to go too big, its already yet another (oh how my heart stress's that word!) invitation for the people here to be vocal about the opinions of me. But my well-bitten tongue continues to crush my opinions of these jumped up scumbags into a bloody mess somewhere into the Xerox of my mind!
I would also advise anyone that is just starting this to change the pieces in the shower. In a nice warm shower ears seem to be a little strechier, which makes it easier to insert bigger tunnels-and of course there's the added bonus that they properly wont get infected and end up a mess! Or you could opt for a dermal punch and get your ears scalpeled to it the perfect size O but I think doing it yourself is a really nice and rewarding experience.