My brows before with no makeup and after treatment

SPMU is quite a new concept and I have to admit, I haven't really seen anyone in the blogosphere with tattooed eyebrows, is there a reason for this? I think not .. just to put something to rest that a lot of people asked me when I said I was getting them done, you do NOT have to have your brows shaved off before they are tattooed. I still have my brows on my face, just they have hair strokes between them in the gaps that I used to fill in and a few additional strokes added where I wanted some hairs too.

My mum was the original reason I went and got my eyebrows tattooed. She has been trying to grow out her eyebrows now for years due to the 80's fashion unfortunately being very very thin eyebrows, think 'sperm brows' as I've heard them being refereed to. Years of over plucking left my poor muma with pretty much just a teeny little line of hair that I wanted to help her bring back to life. Even with all the will power in the world and shaping we could muster between us, she still only had very thin brows that were quite sparse. A colleague she used to work with is currently working within one of the Private Clinics of Harley Street in Bristol and has been now doing SPMU for around 2 years. Now working as a Nursing Assistant, I choose an extra 10 minutes in bed over doing my makeup in the morning but still manage to paint something on my face during the car journey to work at 6.30am and my brows are of course the HARDEST thing to do in a moving car and I'd finally had enough (think moving car and very very sleepy, it's a bad mix) Now was the time we both needed to go and see our friend Lily at the clinic and get the messes sorted, pronto.

We visited Lily on the 9th of May at 11am and were informed our appointments would be roughly around an hour each. Your appointment includes a small consultation to see what essentially you are after shape wise and colour wise and then Lily proceeds to draw on a suitable shape that she can tattoo. This took a lot longer on myself than my mum oddly who had hardly any brows but I think that's due to the fact she was pretty much starting with almost an empty canvas where as with myself, we were working with the previous shape I had just emphasising them a little more and lengthening so Lily essentially outlined my natural brow and added a tail on the end. Just to clarify also - although a thin tattoo needle is used, the treatment is essentially a natural pigment that is tattooed into the skin but does not go as deep as a normal tattoo, which is why you do require the 4-6 week top up and then anywhere between 6 months to 1 year to keep them going.

I was a little worried about the pain as I've never experienced a lot of pain before (I only just had my first blood test at 23!) so my mum went first and Lily applied some numbing cream to my brows so that they had some time to go a little numb although I'll be 100% honest I'm not really sure if it did much as boy, this did hurt I'm not going to lie. After my mum had hers done which looked AMAZING to say the least, it was finally my turn. I lied down on the very clinical looking bed, placed my head into the little head rest and the sound of the gun started to buzz away. The first few strokes were possibly the worst, but then Lily got towards the tail end of my brow where she had to do longer strokes and this well, this was the worst pain of the whole process. To be honest it was painful but after a while the pain just became familiar and a little more uncomfortable than anything. I'm not going to lie though and say it's easy to just lie there and have it done. I sneezed a few times during the treatment as the gun vibrating near your sinuses will make you feel like you have a cold and want to sneeze. And panda eyes were inevitable due to the watery eyes I had experienced. Not everyone will get this though, my mum didn't sneeze once and had a teeny bit of watery eyes going on and felt hardly any pain so it really depends on your threshold. It really does depend on how much pain you can take, I'm glad I went through it and although it hurt and I was in a little to a lot of pain, I didn't move once during the process. Lily mentioned quite a few people can't really handle the pain and do move which obviously makes it harder for her to complete the process. Overall I think as you are getting something from the pain, it's worth being uncomfortable. 

The first part of the treatment is where Lily just outlines the brow shape she has created, not like a felt tip line but with a few little hairstrokes and then she starts to fill in any gaps any the shape she has created with more hairstokes. After a while the pain becomes quite familiar and I was quite happily talking to Lily and my mum throughout who was allowed to stay in the room and have a quite peek now and again. The pain become a little harsh again when she switched from brow to brow but she does try to avoid this as much as possible. The whole treatment usually takes about an hour but as I said mine took a little longer oddly but I think it's because I was a little more specific about the shape I wanted and she had to work with the original shape I had where as with my mum, she was more or less creating a fresh brow shape.

Once the brows are done, the colour is darker than it will become once faded. They will start to heal in the next 5 days and slightly scab, once these scabs fall away they will take a little of the ink with them and you'll be left with a softer result and a better colour. You need to apply a Vitamin A and D cream to your brows twice a day for 5 days and you are not allowed to get them wet as this can slow down the healing process and also get rid of the colour making them patchy once the scabbing process is over. Then you are left with beautiful brows that need a top up within 4-6 weeks at half the price and then they can last anywhere between 6 months to a year and then you just need the regular top up's to keep them going.

Keep an eye out for my eyebrow healing updates coming in the next few days. Do you have any questions on the initial treatment? Or do you have any follow up questions on my healing process? Let me know below ready for the next post!