Thursday May 1st, 2008 @ 12:21 PM
If I’m understanding Ashy’s email, she made the mistake of putting some sort of aggressive antiseptic onto her fresh eyebrow piercing (done by Sean at Creative Tattoos and Piercings in Byron Bay) causing it to get irritated and ultimately seriously infected and in need of antibiotics to clear it up… Not that it can’t get worse, but this is definitely one of the more unhappy eyebrow piercings I’ve seen!
See more in “Eyebrow Barbells“ (Eyebrow Piercing)
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 68 Comments
Wednesday April 30th, 2008 @ 2:15 PM
xTVRx was stretching his nipples using jewelry wrapped in PTFE tape and woke up in the morning with this terrible bubble of pus. Way too gross, so I put the picture after the break!!!
Read more…
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 102 Comments
Wednesday April 30th, 2008 @ 9:31 AM
“Let all red roses bloom signify that your around”…
By Adam at Electric Haven in Tempe, AZ.
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 98 Comments
Tuesday April 29th, 2008 @ 12:22 PM
Xeni demonstrates how not to stretch your lobes as she tries to force her lobes from 1/2″ to 5/8″ before they were ready… Ouch :P
See more in “Ear Stretching (past 1/2″)“ (Ear Piercing)
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 50 Comments
Tuesday April 15th, 2008 @ 7:06 AM
Lexci pulled this mangled and tarnished nostril jewelry out of a customer, who’d worn it for six months before giving up on it… I don’t think the picture quite captures how unpleasant it looked.
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 21 Comments
Saturday April 12th, 2008 @ 6:16 AM
The picture for this entry is after the break.
Following up a little on Mark’s lip silicone and the questions about removal, Fignutz had some problems with a genital injection in which the material extruded through skin leaving a fistulous (nonhealing) tract that took two years of debridement (dead tissue cutting and removal) to heal. He explains,
The initial mod looked like many of those in this section [members link] — something potato or tuber-like. Huge, but ugly with loss of sensation. If you must do this mod, less is better. It’s like the gambler who can’t quit while s/he is ahead. Eventually the odds prevail to your disadvantage. Either tissue necrosis (cell death) due to pressure from the large volume of injected material occurs; the injected material acts as an irritant or toxin; infection occurs; and/or the preservative found in the injected matrix causes a local immune reaction (seen with “KY” and other water soluble lubricants, or some forms of saline used to reconstitute collagen).
Although it is never safe, wise or recommended to perform this genital mod, by far the only substance I would consider is Saline (isotonic 0.9% WITHOUT preservative, sometimes called “Bacteriostatic Saline). I will repeat that it MUST be isotonic (0.9%)saline , which means it is approximately the same concentration of sodium chloride (NaCl)as the normal surrounding tissue. Several other concentrations do exist, as well as injectable sterile water, but these (including water) are guaranteed to cause tissue damage. The modding and enlargement effects of saline, being water soluable, does wear off in a relatively short period of time, so it is a temporary mod, which is usually a good thing. Repeated administration can lead to scarring, fibrosis, chordee and infection however, so unless you’re willing to take the risk, I suggest you get yourself some nice ink, or a frenum, like I did. (I won’t get into the risks of THAT for now!)
Luckily it looks like he’s healed quite well. Many people are not so lucky — check out the interview with Impgrin for someone who had far less luck.
Read more…
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 2 Comments
Wednesday April 9th, 2008 @ 8:59 AM
Sorry for not posting more yesterday, but I had my head slammed in a car door (don’t ask!) and got a concussion and didn’t feel like writing. Let me start off today with a pictorial story from “a young lady from Chicago-land” and her earlobe tearing misadventures in the Ukraine involving stitching… I’m actually not convinced this needed to be stitched (I think it would have healed on its own, personally), but I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth!
This story is in her own words — continue reading to see what happened.
Read more…
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 52 Comments
Saturday March 29th, 2008 @ 7:16 AM
Yowch! Here’s a good reason not to do DIY surface piercing unless you totally know what you’re doing!
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 35 Comments
Friday March 28th, 2008 @ 6:21 PM
As you can see in the before-and-after below, like so many people these days (seriously, I see so many people removing their stretched earlobes every day now), Pen Di’Panda decided he’d had enough. A couple more somewhat disconcerting photos of his taking a pair of scissors to his lobes continue after the break!
Read more…
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 91 Comments
Wednesday March 26th, 2008 @ 6:38 PM
With sincere apologies to the wearer, I really hate saying anything negative about someone’s body modification, but you know, when it comes to tattoo quality, I would never tackle a portrait until I was very confident as a tattoo artist, because the implications of getting it even a little off are so unpleasant. It’s really important to understand I think that doing a portrait is a very different set of skills, and someone can be a quite solid artist on other levels but have difficulty with them… It’s very, very important when you’re looking at someone’s portfolio that you see pieces in the style of what you want.
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 82 Comments
Wednesday March 19th, 2008 @ 5:03 PM
Spookshow-baby-79 has been having some unusual problems with her white ink tattoos. They’re now a full nine months old, and are still not settled… You can see two more close-ups after the break and you can see that it goes through phases of “crocodile skin” and being covered in tiny blackheads which open up and bleed. Not fun, and I expect medical intervention will be required — when a tattoo doesn’t settle down after that long, it quite likely never will.
If anyone has any useful advice or experience, please do post it.
Read more…
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 65 Comments
Monday March 17th, 2008 @ 1:17 PM
…if not his placement. I’m always surprised at just how long people keep piercings that are going wrong. I suspect that in the time it took me to get this image posted, this reader from China has already lost his nipple piercing — I’m actually amazed it’s holding at all with that big ring and that tiny strip of flesh.
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 34 Comments
Friday March 14th, 2008 @ 9:34 AM
Rachel (iam:Freedom), who wears a silicone heart-shaped implant in her chest (put in by Brian on — unintentionally — 6/6/06) was concerned about the very real possibility of what would happen should she be in an accident that left her unconscious or unable to speak and under emergency medical care. How would the doctors respond to a heart-shaped lump on her chest if she was banged up? In order to reduce the risk factors, she wears a bracelet which reads, “SILICONE HEART IMPLANT LOCATED ON MY CHEST”, which may well save everyone quite a bit of grief one day.
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 29 Comments
Monday March 3rd, 2008 @ 1:49 PM
Continuing the gross-out trend, XWV from Estonia claims that his nipple was just fine before the beer… Not sure if that means this was a beer-related incident, or if he was using beer to clean the piercing…
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 54 Comments
Monday March 3rd, 2008 @ 12:10 PM
Stephan writes,
We all know those horror stories about cheap and crappy jewellery but now I found impressive proof! When I talked to a doctor about cheap jewellery and risks he said he must have a rusty piercing barbell somewhere, having had a patient come in with a highly infected nipple-piercing which she was not able to remove after several days of pain.
This is a picture of that jewellery, which Stephen now uses as the perfect poster for their organization to inform people about what to look for in quality jewellery.
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 119 Comments
Monday March 3rd, 2008 @ 9:22 AM
A week after getting his tongue scalpelled to 2ga by John Joyce (Scarab Body Arts, Syracuse, NY), Slalamander Steve was still experiencing quite a lot of swelling, and, as you can see here, bruising. Thankfully, other than a little bit of a skin flap at the edge of the piercing, he’s doing fine now, with the bruising and swelling mostly gone and his speech back to normal.
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 29 Comments
Saturday February 23rd, 2008 @ 9:20 PM
So I wrote up a long set of potential questions for a series of piercer interviews, and I was thinking how few piercers I know that are “just piercers”… Almost everyone these days does scarification, or implants, or tongue splitting as well. There seem to be very few pure piercers out there — not that that’s a bad thing and not that it’ll stop me from interviewing them. Anyway, if anyone has suggestions on who they’d like to see in the piercer interviews — or wants to volunteer — I’m listening.
* * *
On to the entry… I remember when Steve Haworth first popularized circular barbell implants (”the piercer’s implant”) in the mid-90s, he made a point out of welding the beads on to ensure that there was no “gap” for bacteria or dead tissue to collect. However, many people still implant regular body jewelry. While it’s generally not going to cause a problem, it could increase the risk level slightly.
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 44 Comments
Wednesday February 13th, 2008 @ 6:52 PM
Given the discussion about regretting mods that’s been happening a lot lately, I thought I’d put up some photos of what’s becoming an increasingly common modification, the surgical reversal of stretched earlobes back to “normal”. Most definitely procedures like this (offered by both cosmetic surgeons and by body modification practitioners) are rising in how much money they generate as more and more people change their minds for a wide variety of reasons.
Like tattoo removal, these procedures don’t tend to be cheap, with prices ranging from a few hundred dollars to well over a thousand, to say nothing of carrying their own risks as well. Thus, the surer you can be before undertaking semi-permanent body modification, the better!
Continue reading for more photos as S’s ears healed.
Read more…
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 97 Comments
Thursday February 7th, 2008 @ 10:02 AM
A while back we documented Lane’s leg implant gone terribly wrong — part one, part two, part three (and it actually continues after that as well) — recently another problem piece, this one on iam:teenagerfrommars, manifested itself. What’s interesting to me is that in “body modification-style” implants on the calf, I’ve seen a very high complication rate — probably over 50% — whereas in the medical community, calf implants are actually a very low risk implant comparatively speaking (usually the ratio is the other way around). I don’t know if this is because they have a larger surface area, or some other factor.
Sarah emphasizes that she doesn’t regret what she went through, and doesn’t want to scare anyone away from implants, but does feel that it’s important that her story be shared, and I agree. This summer she decided on a large crop circle implant, carved from silicone and about 8″ by 3″, to be put into her left calf — this is the photo the artist sent her of the piece prior to implantation.
Continue reading for how the events unfolded.
Read more…
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 84 Comments
Wednesday February 6th, 2008 @ 12:49 PM
Speaking of both keloids and John Joyce, he had a customer come in with extremely deformed lobes from keloids erupting out of blowout from ear piercings. He cut off and cauterized one of the keloids for the customer (I assume the remainder will follow), and cauterized it. Six weeks later, the keloid is gone (depending on the person they can grow back no matter what treatment is used) and healing has been exceptional.
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 31 Comments
Wednesday February 6th, 2008 @ 12:39 PM
I suppose it’s inevitable now that people have been installing dermal anchors in huge numbers for a year or two that I’ve started to see a flood of somewhat gory removal and rejecting photos… That said, as unpleasant as these particular pictures left, the scars are extremely minor.
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 44 Comments
Tuesday February 5th, 2008 @ 2:59 PM
With apologies to the submitter for posting this in this context, but one of the biggest reasons that piercings (and mods in general) go wrong is that people don’t take proper care of their bodies. Most body modifications are in effect asking your body to heal a wound “open”, which it’s definitely not evolved to do, so it’s important that you give it the best possible chances to do so by adhering to general standards of cleanliness.
As the person who processes the photos and has to look at everything in detail, ear washing is also appreciated for that reason.
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 83 Comments
Monday February 4th, 2008 @ 8:23 PM
You know, given that for at least the last decade there’s been lots of easy to find information on suitable jewelry and the appropriate placement of that jewelry, it always surprises — and offends — me that it’s still a daily event to see poorly placed and generally irresponsible body art (such as the terrible nostril and industrial I recently posted). For example, why do I still see shallow navels like this all the time?
The only thing that could make it worse is this jewelry, which my friend Anders actually removed from a customer’s body! It was bought at a flea market in Australia…
And don’t get me started on tattoos. Every day I see tattoos — from long-surviving studios no less — where my first thought is that the average ten year old kid could probably draw something better. I don’t know if I’m more shocked that the artists are wholly unaware of their shortcomings, or that the clients are. I mean, it’s not like you can’t get tattoo magazines at every store, showing you what a tattoo is “supposed” to looked like… Can people really not tell the difference?
Posted by Shannon | Permalink | 58 Comments
