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

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!

"Birds of a Feather"

ModBlog and story time!

So! Before I get back to my crazy teen adventures in self-piercing I would like to share some exciting news! My piercing art was featured on ModBlog for the second time! It's amazing that once upon a time I could only fantasize about all the things I saw on BME and now I am being featured in their blog ^.^

Here is the link! Chain Gang and also the link to my first appearance  

The Surface of a Pearl <3

Now back to the odyssey of how I came to be the body piercer I am today.  Every weekend my friends and I would go to Sunset place in South Miami to well, just hang out.  Not much else for 13 year olds to do really :cP  There was a Hot Topic there and I fell in love with this tongue ring that had an acrylic blue die on the top of it.  Pretty much exactly like this one:

The only problem of course was that I did not have my tongue pierced.  It was a couple of weeks before my 14th birthday and I wanted it bad! I decided to buy the barbell and when everyone went to bed that night I would do the piercing.  This time I was at home, which was with my Aunt and grandmother since they lived closer to the schools my friends went to :c) My grandmother was a seamstress all her life so there were definitely plenty of needles in her arsenal.  Again I burned the needle and dropped it in alcohol and figured this was "sterile".  I think the only reason I did not get an infection is because the mouth is amazingly great at killing the tons of bacteria it deals with on a regular basis. 

As always I went to school and showed it off, thought I was little miss bad ass.  I had it for about 2 weeks in which I meticulously made sure no one would notice it.  The bellybutton is one thing, but a piercing in my tongue was made CLEAR to me was not acceptable under my families roof.  One day I was fooling around and got cocky and for whatever reason opened my mouth nice and wide right in front of my mom as I was speaking.  My mother straight SLAPPED me across my face.  Mind you I had never been hit by my mother before.... she was FURIOUS!

I was made to take this one out immediately.  Of course my mother refused to believe I had done it on myself and continually interrogated me about who had done it for me so she could call the cops on them.  Oddly enough, the worst and probably first actual punishment I received in my life came from my brother with who I stayed on the weekends.  He grounded me!.... I had never been grounded in my life! On top of that I was grounded for my birthday!   The craziest part about it was that my own mother and grandmother were trying to sneak me out of the house to no avail O.o  (I won't deny I am a bit of a brat but I still hold a tiny grudge til this day)

Now this was actually the last time I did things this terribly unhygienic.  I laid off piercing myself for a bit and by the time I got back into it I was becoming much more professional.  Well anything better than what I was doing is more professional LOL.

Now remember everyone! There is a big difference between self-piercing (which can lead to some nasty consequences in itself) and letting some scratcher pierce you who pierces people for $10 out of their house.  When you add others into the equation you never know what you can catch! Hepatitis B can live on a DRY surface for up to 8 days! Respect your bodies, keep yourselves safe and if you decide on getting a body piercing or tattoo make sure you GO TO A PROFESSIONAL! You spend hundreds on your shoes, clothes and phones; treat your bodies with the same amount of respect. :c)

 Don't be this person!