It took me a minute to talk about this one, I've been sooooo very busy at the shop lately(eat your heart out tattoo fayetteville!). But I definitely had to put this up, because it's another example of the local piercer gals showing their amazing Septum skills...lol, that's sarcasm.
A couple came in a couple of months ago. Adorable and sweet and very much in need. They had gone to our favorite other piercing studio in town 💎 to get matching septum piercings.
Regaling the dynamic duo with tales of the owner of the studio having been piercing for over 20 years and many cries of 'This is normal' we continue our tale....
It took 1 1/2 hours to do the gentlemen's piercing, and three attempts! Can you imagine? His cartilage looks like swiss cheese and by the third attempt he was done. Left with a painful cartilage septum piercing that is far too high up, the far too tight ring was stuck firmly up his nose. But....we are going to concentrate on the lovely lady, as her piercing was the worse of the two.....
There were multiple problems with her piercing...
We can see, first off, that the jewelry is a plated gold horseshoe...No matter the base metal or type of coating/finish it is doesn't matter as it is against ATSM rules/guidelines to use a plated piece of jewelry for the initial piercing.
Next, the piercing location is too far high up in the nostril it is also set extremely forward and through the cartilage. Now....I am not going to go into how to pierce the septum, I mean I reserve that for my students, lol.....maybe the owner should come learn how to do it correctly instead of continuing to teach incorrect methods to her students!
Point is this: Guys and Gals, there is a sweet spot between the two cartilage shelves. It can be hard to find and young piercers have a hard time, but it's 95% of the time there. Just because several young piercers gang up on you and say things like: "It's totally normal to have to pierce it several times to get it straight, the owner who has over 20 years piercing had to do mine like three times in a row!" (this was actually said to this couple when they were getting their piercings); DO NOT BELIEVE THEM.
This was extremely painful for the client I had her immediately take out the piece. She was starting to get some swelling and there's some redness, and intermittent bleeding(which had been happening for two weeks off and on), around the piercing location inside her nose so we needed to get that plated of peace out of there ASAP.
I told her to come back in about 2 1/2 to 3 weeks and I would redo it for her.
She did come back several weeks later and I gave her completely different experience. We use the basic horseshoe and it
took me less than five minutes to do her piercing. There was no pain she barely felt it and left a great review, yay!
Here's some takeaways:
NO PLATED PIECES. if you want gold it needs to be 14K solid gold.
If you are having doubts during the procedure, WALK AWAY
Its NOT NORMAL to pierce a septum several times in a row.
Double check licensing. Go to: https://bodyart.adh.arkansas.gov/Public/OnlineLicenseLookup.aspx to check Arkansas licensing. I will make a seperate blog post showing how to decipher this website.
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