Top Tips: Caring for Your New Permanent Makeup

Any New Procedure

Congrats! You've just finished your permanent cosmetics procedure and now there are a few things you can do to ensure it heals properly.

More importantly, you want to make sure you allow it to heal as "quietly" and undisturbed as possible.

What does that mean? Make sure when you are cleansing your face, whether it be in the shower, taking a bath or over the sink:

• It’s important to keep the amount of water on the new procedure to a minimum.

• Rather than rubbing or scrubbing, just a gentle pat to cleanse and to dry is all that's necessary.

• Apply a very light amount of Aquaphor or recommended ointment or cream with a clean q-tip and remove any excess with the dry side of the q-tip.

Eyebrows

Eyebrows may be the most difficult area to heal properly and a more conscious effort is needed to leave them alone.

As eyebrow permanent cosmetics are healing, they will itch and it's common to inadvertently scratch them without even thinking about it.

This will cause light spots as you scratch the scabs or dry flaky skin causing them to come off too soon pulling color with it.

The general rule is to encourage the scabs to stay on as long as possible for the best possible result.

Keeping them moisturized using Aquaphor or the recommended product by your technician during the healing time is very helpful.

Don’t overdo the moisturizer as you don't want your eyebrows to appear greasy, wet or shiny. You want them to be able to breathe but keeping them moisturized does keep them comfortable.

Eyeliner

Surprisingly, eyeliner permanent cosmetics heal well.

We naturally tend to be gentle with our eyes anyway, so not disturbing them is usually pretty easy.

The hardest part is going without mascara and eyeshadow for the first few days.

There may be some swelling, especially the morning after, but once you get up and move around, apply a cold compress often for a few minutes at a time, this will help with the swelling.

Some people may experience a little bit of redness, or bruising on the upper eyelids, but this also subsides after a day or so.

Eyelids produce oil and many clients use little ointment if any.

As the scabbing loosens off the skin, your eyelashes may hold onto the scabs. It's ok to very carefully remove the scabs as long as it’s not still attached to the skin. These scabs will resemble clumpy mascara.

Lips

Lips, being a dry stretchy muscle, and without any sweat or oil glands, tend to have a significant amount of chopping and peeling the first three or four days.

It's important to keep them well lubricated with a moisturizing lip balm such as Burt’s Bees, Vaseline or anything soothing that doesn't dry the lips out.

Don’t be alarmed as it’s very common to have swelling as lips are very vascular.

Clients with naturally thin lips rather enjoy this but clients with full lips begin to feel quite "lippy".

Typically with lips, at first they are too bright and/or dark, then they appear to have disappeared after the first few days, then the color blooms back.

There is usually some dryness or tightness for another month, so it’s important to keep them well moisturized, but most importantly with lips, if you have ever had a cold sore or fever blister, you must obtain a prescription from your doctor or dentist to prevent an outbreak.

Valtrex or generic Acyclovir is generally recommended, and you want to make sure it's in your system two to three days before your appointment.

In addition to having it in your systems beforehand, it’s important to have it in your system four days after your appointment.

This procedure does not cause an outbreak but it will trigger the virus in your system. As long as you're getting a prescription you may as well get it for your follow up visit as well.

If you don't get on this medication, you will have an outbreak and potentially have scarring and you will lose the color in that area.

So that was short term care, next, long term care.

Top 6 Questions: What to Know When Searching for a Microblade Technician

So you’re wanting to go down that journey of getting your eyebrows microbladed; cool!

This is a fun experience, but with all services, clients should do their due diligence to make sure the service provider will be able to give them the results they’re looking for.

What can you do in order to make sure your microblade technician knows what they’re doing?

Ask these six questions:

1. Can I see your portfolio of before, after and healed results?

   And have you retouched any of the photos? Raw, unretouched images are the best, as they actually show what their work looks like. Make certain these images are theirs and not copied from the internet.

2. How much experience has the technician had?

   This is not a skill one masters overnight. Not only is brow design an art, simulating hair strokes to look natural within the brow design is another art and there's a big difference between creating a beautiful eyebrow that is symmetrical, not too big, not too close together, and enhances your eyes. Additionally, implanting each and every hair stroke at the proper depth, and making it beautiful, and making it last takes skill, knowledge of the skin, proper technique and communication.

3. Will you tell me if I'm a good candidate?

   Skin is like bananas and oranges. If you have poreless, smooth skin like a banana, you may be a good candidate. If you have oily skin, and large pores, the hair strokes will turn out blurry. A simple way to understand this is to draw a line on an eggshell or banana skin and draw the same line on an orange peel. Notice the difference.

4. What are my options if I'm not a good candidate?

   There are definitely some options, such as an ombre brow, which is shading to give you a dimensional look, or maybe a combination of shading and microblading.

5. Are any touchups included?

   This is an absolute necessity. For a technician to achieve perfection the first time, every time, every client is unrealistic. Color selection initially is an educational guess. It's not an absolute science. There are many variables such as personal preference, subtle skin undertones that can be surprising, implanting pigment too deep or not deep enough will give different outcomes, therefore, is the technician skilled in adjusting the color?

If your new artist can answer these questions, great! This means you've found a great fit for you!

Why Fundamental Training vs Microblade Training?

When I began doing permanent cosmetics over 30 years ago, the most popular procedure was eyeliner. A large majority benefited by having a natural lash enhancement, or a thicker more dramatic eyeliner. Eyebrows weren't such a big thing back in the '80s. The unkept, natural Brooke Shields look was very popular and women didn't shape them at all, or if they did, they removed all but a pencil-thin line.

That has all changed as the number one request for permanent cosmetic services in the past few years has to be flip flopped from eyeliner to eyebrow procedures.

Due to the popularity of the Kardashian bold brow look and the onset of microblading, suddenly everyone is interested in learning how to do this look.

But, there is a problem with learning microblading before having a solid foundation in cosmetic tattooing.

Here’s a question you should ask yourself:

• Would you go to cosmetology school to only learn how to foil hair because you love the look and you aren't interested in cutting, solid coloring, perming or anything else?

Of course not. You wouldn't be able to pass your boards to become licensed just for learning one skill.

Currently, Washington State doesn't require you to have any knowledge or pass any test to get licensed in permanent cosmetics, but your future clients certainly do.

Why would your future clients care?

Microblading is new. It's a beautiful, natural look...when properly done.

Microblading requires more than a needle, pigment, and a forehead to work on.

But first, you should practice on something else. Go ahead, grab a paper and pencil and draw hair stroke eyebrows. If you're artistic to begin with and have a good eye for symmetry and balance, they may turn out acceptable.

Now that you’ve have mastered the art and design of beautiful brows, implanting each and every stroke into the skin is another skill set.

Recognizing how this stroke is supposed to look in the skin requires practice and experience. Some of the most beautiful hair strokes you see on the internet are implanted too shallow. They are wispy, airy, natural, and when healed, they will more than likely disappear.

On the other hand, if implanted too deep, they will be darker, thicker, murky and gray, they will be forever permanent.

I’ll go out on a limb and say that you won't like them and neither will your client.

Here are some other issues that might come up:

• Not every client is an acceptable candidate for microblading or hair stroke brows (More on that later).

• What if a client comes in with previously done brows that need shape adjusting, and or color correction?

Microblading is not going to fix this.

Retrospectively, now that you’ve completed some beautiful brows and you have a very happy client, but now she wants you to do her eyeliner and her lips!

You're doing a disservice to her and to yourself by not being able to do these other services because you only know how to microblade.

Back you go for more training, and it's a bit backwards doing it this way because unfortunately, you didn't know that you needed to know so much more than how to simply learn to microblade.

What’s the lesson?

Learn all aspects of permanent cosmetics, you’ll be doing justice not only to your clients but yourself an ultimately provide better services due to a more well-rounded set of skills.