This video/convo is pretty long but totally worth listening to! HILARIOUS!
Remember everyone! Go to a professional piercer,
not some stranger on craigslist! LOL
January 11, 2012
January 1, 2012
Happy New Years!
This time last year I had just cut ties with my 3 closest friends and had been recently shunned by my first tattoo family. My relationship was in turmoil because of our mutual losses due to betrayals of someone we considered family. Not to mention how in debt we were from throwing a fundraiser which was successful enough to help our friend in need but not pay us back for what we had put in. My life was probably at the lowest point it had ever been. I was feeling more alone than ever and throwing myself into new friendships blindly because I wanted to forget everything. There was a lot of self pity and internal struggle but I am proud to say I have woken the fuck up.
This past year I realized my true friends have been around all along and I did not need selfish people in my life; including myself. I have been working harder to rejuvenate my friendships and spend more time with my new ones. I have finally stopped seeing myself as the D-list friend I always thought I was and realized how many people truly care about me. For these people I am thankful and they have truly made me so hopeful for the year to come.
As far as my career, there were a couple of hiccups as far as my places of work but I have only ended up in better and better situations. I was fortunate enough to attend the APP Conference in Las Vegas and be amongst and meet so many inspirational piercers. The fire in my belly was reignited and I am ready to take anything on. 2012 will be the year I become an APP member no matter what it entails. This may or may not involve leaving Miami but I am ready for it. I am so excited for this coming year, I want to do a piece of piercing art every month and continue to strive to be the best I can be.
2012, I am going to kick your butt with awesomeness, so get ready!
November 27, 2011
My first ever piece of piercing art
I have always been hesitant to jump into the next step in my career. I always feel like I haven't earned it or I'm not ready. It took me a year of researching and practicing on friends before I started doing surface anchors. Before I even took that step I desperately wanted to venture into doing play piercing. I tried to get my mentor J.D. to do some pieces with me so I could have back up but he was never really interested. Finally my hubby Fernando gave me a huge push! In fact it was a push for myself and two of my closest friends at the time to get our art out there. We planned to put together an art show <3 Originally I was just supposed to do a live performance but I didn't feel comfortable having the first play piercing piece I did be in front of an audience. I then decided to do a series and have photographs of them as part of the actual exhibit. I love corset piercing which are the usual first step for most but I thought they would be too predictable. My goal became to create pieces that adorned the body so beautifully that they almost make you forget there are 8+ piercing holding everything in place.
My first model was the lovely Jennifer Pierre who was the manager at the shop where I worked at the time. She is actually the female voice of an amazing band called Askultura which you should definitely check out. Inspired by the lovely beehive she made with her knee-length dreads I wanted to do something that looked classic. I decided to make her a very unique set of pearl necklaces <3 I also made the feather hair piece and added to pearls to match. I am forever thankful for her trusting me to do this for my first time on her. I sterilized everything I would need at the shop and brought it all home so I could take my time.
Running on cuban time she showed up quite late in the night. My "photographer" also was unable to acquire any kind of proper camera so we ended up using my little digital kodak camera. I covered all of my work space in saran wrap to make sure nothing would get contaminated and laid my bibs on top. I had made a stencil for this because I was so nervous about it being perfect. The piercing process actually went super smoothly, her skin was nice and stretchy so it was not too bad for her either. She was a total trooper! After all the rings were in place it came time to close them up. I went to close the first ring and after a little bit of pressure "click" it came out of place. This had never happened to me I had no idea what was going on. I looked at the groove inside the ring closing plier and realized I brought the wrong one home O.O The one I brought home was made for very small rings and the ones I put in Jen were 1/2". I felt like the biggest dummy ever! Closing up these rings then became a very looooong process. I had to hold the rings with my fingers and little by little try to close them up so I wouldn't hurt Jen. My "photographer" ended up going home because she had completely fallen asleep on the couch waiting for me to finish. She took a couple of pictures of the process but it took hours to get all the rings closed up. I ended up not even using the balls that were meant for the rings and using some of the pearls I had instead so I could leave them a bit more open. This actually ended up looking really nice ^.^
When all was said and done I was extremely proud. I even took all the pictures of the piece myself way before I had any kind of photography training and I was very happy with the outcome. This ended up being the first piece I ever had featured on ModBlog. It is also the piece that had the nicest and longest blurb attached with the photos <3 All in all, despite things not going ideally, I love this piece. Check out the feature on ModBlog titled The Surface of a Pearl ^.^
Absolutely love this photo of Jen and her big beautiful smile <3 <3 <3
November 15, 2011
My first live piercing performance in a while!
So this past Saturday was the grand opening of my friend Boris Bianchi's new tattoo shop, Nue Tattoo Studio in the Midtown area of Miami, FL. I must admit I did not plan too much ahead of time, I was pretty comfortable with going with the flow until the day came. I knew what I was going to do but was unable to meet with my good friend and model Tyger Lily until an hour and a half before I was supposed to be there. Luckily my experience in piercing art and body piercing gives me enough skills to have been able to do it beautifully (if I do say so myself). I was definitely super nervous though!
Tyger Lily is an amazing artist in her own right, so she painted bones on her arms and leggings and did some amazing face paint as her creative mind always does. She had an awesome fur vest which created a very interesting clash of animals with the feathers I was about to decorate her with. I honestly thought the event was not going to be as successful as it was. No offense to Boris, he had just started promoting the event pretty last minute. Thankfully it was a huge turn out which only added to my butterflies. Everyone thought I was being silly because this was my 4th live performance but I always get nervous.
The musical performances of the night were especially awesome. When we first walked in we were welcomed by the soothing sounds of Amigo the Devil. It was just him and his music was soothing yet dark and cynical which I very much appreciated. He was also a looker ;c) haha I was too nervous to notice that until I was done much later in the night because I walked in and immediately focused on prepping Tyger Lily. I took her straight to the back and began cleaning her and marking her. She came up with the idea of doing the piece as the next musical act played and I was ecstatic that we did. After several nervous cigarette breaks and going back and forth cleaning up and adding marks to her chest, the next musical act was going on which meant it was time to begin.
The musical performance was that of Diablo Dimes an awesomely mustachioed man (I love the mustaches) wearing a hat, suspender and slacks. His music was an amazing mix of blues, ragtime and honky tonk; I have a fond love for this type of good time music. The second I began piercing Lily all my nerves went away. I began stomping my foot as I went to grab the next needle and the piercing process actually was done by the second song if I remember correctly. The longest part of the process was actually attaching all the feathers that either didn't want to fit in the caps of the thin hypodermic needles or would keep falling out. Honestly, I had so much fun with this piece. People kept coming up and telling me how amazing it was going to be and how nuts it was and I loved it. The best part was working with Tyger Lily, who I turned into a bat live once before. She gets nervous too but ends up enjoying it so much and appreciates the art of it so much that it is just always an amazing experience. Here are some of the photos!!!
Amazingly just today, or well yesterday since its almost 2AM now lol, the piece came out on ModBlog!! My third feature now on Modblog Check it out and leave some comments!
Tyger Lily is an amazing artist in her own right, so she painted bones on her arms and leggings and did some amazing face paint as her creative mind always does. She had an awesome fur vest which created a very interesting clash of animals with the feathers I was about to decorate her with. I honestly thought the event was not going to be as successful as it was. No offense to Boris, he had just started promoting the event pretty last minute. Thankfully it was a huge turn out which only added to my butterflies. Everyone thought I was being silly because this was my 4th live performance but I always get nervous.
The musical performances of the night were especially awesome. When we first walked in we were welcomed by the soothing sounds of Amigo the Devil. It was just him and his music was soothing yet dark and cynical which I very much appreciated. He was also a looker ;c) haha I was too nervous to notice that until I was done much later in the night because I walked in and immediately focused on prepping Tyger Lily. I took her straight to the back and began cleaning her and marking her. She came up with the idea of doing the piece as the next musical act played and I was ecstatic that we did. After several nervous cigarette breaks and going back and forth cleaning up and adding marks to her chest, the next musical act was going on which meant it was time to begin.
The musical performance was that of Diablo Dimes an awesomely mustachioed man (I love the mustaches) wearing a hat, suspender and slacks. His music was an amazing mix of blues, ragtime and honky tonk; I have a fond love for this type of good time music. The second I began piercing Lily all my nerves went away. I began stomping my foot as I went to grab the next needle and the piercing process actually was done by the second song if I remember correctly. The longest part of the process was actually attaching all the feathers that either didn't want to fit in the caps of the thin hypodermic needles or would keep falling out. Honestly, I had so much fun with this piece. People kept coming up and telling me how amazing it was going to be and how nuts it was and I loved it. The best part was working with Tyger Lily, who I turned into a bat live once before. She gets nervous too but ends up enjoying it so much and appreciates the art of it so much that it is just always an amazing experience. Here are some of the photos!!!
Amazingly just today, or well yesterday since its almost 2AM now lol, the piece came out on ModBlog!! My third feature now on Modblog Check it out and leave some comments!
November 5, 2011
The Good, the funny and the stinky!
Being an apprentice was pretty fun for me :c) I loved the crew, the environment, the only scary thing was really the boss man who lurked in the background of our minds but was never actually around. Usually I only saw him at outings and heard his voice over the phone. Until this day, if the phone at the shop rings more than twice I get anxious. If this happened at the shop we would get majorly yelled at O.o
Simultaneously, I had found the man of my dreams and our relationship was flourishing. I met him only a couple of weeks after starting my apprenticeship. Truth is he was nothing like anyone I had dated before, not quite "my type". I had decided to give up on these ideals I had built because it was not working. Granted I was only 20 years old, but my longest relationship had been 3 months! LOL So after a bit of hesitation, and a mind expanding journey ;c) I had fallen in love. Very shortly after becoming official, I moved in with him <3 Fernando has been one of the strongest forces pushing me and supporting me throughout my entire career. Every day he pushes me to be the best and expand my horizons <3 He is my hero ^.^
Being the apprentice of course meant that everyone could mess with me. When I was stretching my septum, which is terribly painful, one of my co-workers Nicole would love to flick the tip of my nose O.O uuuuggghhh sooo painful but it never bothered me too much because it was expected. Nicole loved to mess with me but she was never a dick about it. I had one tattoo that I got at the shop one day and refused to disclose to anyone what it meant. It was a mysterious set of 3 numbers on the inside of my finger LOL. She decided to fart on me every chance she got in an attempt to get me to tell her. I could never be bothered by Nicole though because she was just so hilariously silly about everything. The only time I believe we ever had a problem was when she asked me to do paperwork for her while I was in the middle of watching J.D. do a piercing. I was meant to be the piercing apprentice so my doing something for the tattoo artists when I was trying to learn was not my job. Maytee got a little peeved with her so Nicole got a little peeved with me but we definitely got over it though, it was no big deal. Of all people I think J.D. was the most upset by it. He hated when I let people "take advantage of me" and I always did Nicole the favor because I usually was not busy. This time I was though and it bit me in the butt and so he got defensive on my behalf.
J.D. and Nicole were pretty close though, even kind of played the "cool kids" role and made fun of one of our other co-workers for being "cheesy" and bitched about hearing all his same "lame jokes". They were a little cliquey sometimes but in the end we were all family. They loved to put me in uncomfortable situations though. Like making me have the awkward talks with customers and making me pierce those J.D. did not want to deal with.
There was one man who we are pretty sure was homeless. He had a layer of grime on him, was a bit stinky, a little out there and awkward. He had quite a few different piercings and every once in a wile came in for another. One day we saw him walking up to the shop and Nicole and J.D. quite literally told me "this ones on you!" and ran out to Nicole's car to hide. Oooooohhh man! I had done maybe 1-3 Navel piercings and it just so happened this is what he wanted to get pierced. This was a much older man with a big pot belly btw. Here is a picture they took as they laughed at my misery LOL
Simultaneously, I had found the man of my dreams and our relationship was flourishing. I met him only a couple of weeks after starting my apprenticeship. Truth is he was nothing like anyone I had dated before, not quite "my type". I had decided to give up on these ideals I had built because it was not working. Granted I was only 20 years old, but my longest relationship had been 3 months! LOL So after a bit of hesitation, and a mind expanding journey ;c) I had fallen in love. Very shortly after becoming official, I moved in with him <3 Fernando has been one of the strongest forces pushing me and supporting me throughout my entire career. Every day he pushes me to be the best and expand my horizons <3 He is my hero ^.^
Being the apprentice of course meant that everyone could mess with me. When I was stretching my septum, which is terribly painful, one of my co-workers Nicole would love to flick the tip of my nose O.O uuuuggghhh sooo painful but it never bothered me too much because it was expected. Nicole loved to mess with me but she was never a dick about it. I had one tattoo that I got at the shop one day and refused to disclose to anyone what it meant. It was a mysterious set of 3 numbers on the inside of my finger LOL. She decided to fart on me every chance she got in an attempt to get me to tell her. I could never be bothered by Nicole though because she was just so hilariously silly about everything. The only time I believe we ever had a problem was when she asked me to do paperwork for her while I was in the middle of watching J.D. do a piercing. I was meant to be the piercing apprentice so my doing something for the tattoo artists when I was trying to learn was not my job. Maytee got a little peeved with her so Nicole got a little peeved with me but we definitely got over it though, it was no big deal. Of all people I think J.D. was the most upset by it. He hated when I let people "take advantage of me" and I always did Nicole the favor because I usually was not busy. This time I was though and it bit me in the butt and so he got defensive on my behalf.
J.D. and Nicole were pretty close though, even kind of played the "cool kids" role and made fun of one of our other co-workers for being "cheesy" and bitched about hearing all his same "lame jokes". They were a little cliquey sometimes but in the end we were all family. They loved to put me in uncomfortable situations though. Like making me have the awkward talks with customers and making me pierce those J.D. did not want to deal with.
There was one man who we are pretty sure was homeless. He had a layer of grime on him, was a bit stinky, a little out there and awkward. He had quite a few different piercings and every once in a wile came in for another. One day we saw him walking up to the shop and Nicole and J.D. quite literally told me "this ones on you!" and ran out to Nicole's car to hide. Oooooohhh man! I had done maybe 1-3 Navel piercings and it just so happened this is what he wanted to get pierced. This was a much older man with a big pot belly btw. Here is a picture they took as they laughed at my misery LOL
So now add to the normal stress of a piercing the fact that this man had Alligator skin!! I literally put all of my body weight into it and could NOT break his skin. After many embarrassing attempts I had to bring over J.D. Even he couldn't do it for a bit at first but eventually got it through. It was quite terrible but it was part of the learning experience.
There were also fun little rituals we had like watching Cheaters every day at 3 PM! This was a must for Nicole and myself, I still love this show haha! My mentor Maytee and I also would watch Beavis and Butthead DVD's whenever we got bored <3 One of our favorite clips was from the episode Beavis and Butthead Take a Lap. Beavis and Butthead run to the phone after being completely brain washed by this commercial and their faces and sounds just made Maytee and I laugh HYSTERICALLY!
Overall I loved my apprenticeship <3 It had its ups and downs, the struggles of being broke, trying constantly to impress and make myself seem worthy of the knowledge I was receiving. Many have had it much worse than myself but I was lucky. It was still tough, don't get me wrong. My apprenticeship lasted a whole year almost exactly and I finally became head piercer at the second location on February 13th, 2009. It was Friday the 13th actually and boy was it a crazy welcoming on my first day. We continue the journey next time! ^.^
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