I have been considering having more facial piercings for a few months, what made it not quite a simple decision for me because I have currently have quite a few piercings on my face,(septum, monroe, labret, vertical bridge, and nostril), so I needed to consider placement in relationship to these.
At A Glance Author Renegade-Timelord Contact Renegade-Timelord@bme.anon IAM Renegade-Timelord When It just happened Artist Lisa Studio Nala Body Piercing Studio Location Tamworth, Staffordshire, UK After thinking about it for a while, reading information about some types of facial piercings which I haven' got currently or had in the past, and playing around with a picture of myself using a photograph editing package I 'tried on' various piercing ideas, initially I was considering having more labrets done, but on looking at the pictures of myself with them added I decided that that would look too 'busy'.
Eventually I came the decision to have my cheeks done, as I thought it would suit my face and complement my other holes; but when I went to my usual piercing studio I found out that that they have chosen not do this piercing anymore; they explained their reasons for this which I appreciated - but I still felt that this was the right piercing for me.
So I did more research online to make sure I had a well informed picture of the issues possible with this piercing.
I didn't know of any other good piercers in my area who do less common work, so I looked around to find another good studio which was relatively local to me which does them and eventually found details of one online, (Nala in Tamworth), which sounded professional and suitably experienced and contacted them.
I phoned them to find out how much it would cost, (sixty pounds), and checked to see whether I needed an appointment, but they said to just pop in any time during their opening hours.
Once I have decided to go for something I don't like to wait too long, so this afternoon a friend drove me down to Tamworth and we found the place quite easily.
The shop area was pleasant with good displays of various body and conventional jewellery, and the staff seemed nice.
When my friend and I arrived there was no one else waiting to be pierced, so Lisa who was going to do the piercings took me straight into the studio as soon as I had filled in a well detailed consent form - I was impressed with the form actually as I hadn't been to a piercer whose consent form asked the client whether they are diabetic - which I am, (though so far I have had none of the problems with healing that this can cause in some people)
The studio was clean and comfortable and the Lisa was very friendly and easy to talk to, as she has her cheeks pierced already it was good to know that she could explain how it would work from her own experience as well as from having done the piercing quite a lot.
She told me that this piercing might take a slightly longer than average time because it is so important to be accurate in deciding on positioning when piercing both cheeks as they need to be properly lined up.
I sat down and the she asked what sort of position I would like the dimples and cleaned the areas of both cheeks. My friend kept telling me to smile to show the natural dimple I have on one side of my face, but its not in a spot that would look good pierced, next the piercer marked a few possible placements but when I looked I felt that they were possibly too close to my mouth since I have two piercings around my mouth already, so she wiped off the marks.
I have quite a wide face, so I decided to have the piercing slightly further towards the middle of my cheeks approximately in line with my top lip,
so I looked in the mirror again and poked my fingers where I would like the piercings and she re-marked them and then checked and remarked one side to make it even more accurate. I don't know how long it took to find the right spots but it was quite easily done.
Next thing was checking for blood vessels with a torch, which showed no problems, so the placement I liked seemed to be fine.
Then Lisa asked if I was okay and commented about how calm I seemed, (apparently she had had some nervous clients earlier in the day), clamped and then pierced my right cheek and then the left.
The right side felt like a slight pinch, the left was so painless that I hardly noticed it, there was not bleeding at all, I smiled and made some comment while the needle was in there which I thought for some reason was kind of amusing.
It was all done quite quickly using 22mm long in 16 gauge with 5mm balls to prevent them from digging in so long as there isn't an unusual amount of swelling.
The actual piercing was fine, and as good and painless an experience as any piercing I've ever had, so I was very happy and impressed.
The piercer then checked that I was still happy with the placements and explained about what to do about swelling, and told me to come back if there was a problem with excessive swelling, she then said I can come back in a couple of weeks for a checkup and to have shorter labrets fitted, and then and checked that I knew the aftercare routine for this type of piercing.
The morning after - I took some ibuprofen last night before bed and used my alcohol free mouthwash and H2ocean, there were no crusties and this morning there is a little soreness and slight bruising on surface skin on the right side which hopefully shouldn't be a problem, and I've had no difficulties with eating as long as I do it cautiously to avoid biting the balls inside my mouth.
So far there is very little swelling - I don't ordinarily get much, but I know it might come up over the next couple of days. I've been using alcohol free mouthwash and taking an anti-inflammatory, but it looks great and over all I am very happy with the experience and I will definitely recommend this studio to people and would go there again.