BME: Body Modification Ezine

A tattooed person suspends from hooks, laying flat, one leg higher than the other. Their head is back, and they seem to be smiling, dark hair dangling like an anime character.

Celebrating body modification culture since 1994.

Category: ModBlog

  • Red Eyes of Doom!

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Mary Jo just had Brazil’s Rafael Leão Dias finish her other eye, injecting both of them with red… It’s an interesting color, because unlike tattooing your eyes black or green or just about any other color, no one is ever going to look at you and think you tattooed your eyes — in some ways it reminds me of the guy that got hyper-realistic road-rash tattooed on his face (one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen by the way) because she will forever be freaking out people on a whole different level than everyone else with tattooed eyeballs! I’m sure it’s both very fun and very tiresome dealing with the questions.

    Red is perhaps the most volatile color of tattoo ink, so I’ll be keeping watch on how her eyes progress. One important thing to understand as well is that the majority of tattoo pigments — red especially — are not completely long-term stable in the body, so even when they appear safe in the short term, as they break down over time significant problems can occur since there’s no way to remove either the ink or any chemical compounds it breaks down into. If you get your eyes tattooed in your teens, that ink has to stay there for a long, long time still. I do think it looks stunning, but it’s not a gamble I’m comfortable with personally. Of course, it’s not as if my blue ink is considered safe for use in eyes according to the MSDS data either so my worry is a little hypocritical!

    When tattooing with red ink, especially in the eye, it’s extremely important to be aware of what’s in the ink, because there are a variety of compounds that can create a red ink — iron oxide (rust basically), naphthol (arguably the safest option), pyrazolone (an organic compound), cadmium red (a toxic compound common to paint), and cinnabar (which is mercury based, and also toxic). Unfortunately sometimes because the more toxic compounds give a stronger color and sometimes because they’re cheaper, it’s not uncommon to find them in tattoo inks, although it’s becoming more rare. If you want to do some research for yourself, most higher quality red inks are a mix of Pigment Red 210 C.I.# 12477 (naphthol), Pigment Yellow 65 C.I. #11740 (2-[(4-methoxy-2-nitrophenyl)azo]-N-(2-methoxyphenyl)-3-oxo-Butanamide), Pigment Orange 13 C.I. #21110 (pyrazolone), and Titanium Oxide C.I. #77891, depending on the specific tone — as well as glycerine, witch hazel, various alcohols or even just listerine, various acrylic resins, and water. None of these compounds (with the exception of water) are considered safe in the eye — although they are generally stable compounds. The only ink which has been validated as truly “safe” in the eye is — and this may come as a surprise — classic India Ink.

    And see also the Eyeball Tattoo FAQ of course.

  • Ear Ridge Implants

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    An alternative to the various ear pointing procedures that can give a person an entirely different sort of anatomical self-expression is using an implant to augment the outer helix ridge/fold of the ear. In this example, Pablo Perelmuter (pabloperelmuter.com) of Buenos Aires, has placed a what looks like a set of four beads but is actually a single 6mm silicone bead string manufactured by Steve Haworth — using a single piece like this ensures there will be no shifting and the placement will stay perfectly spaced (and they’re quite soft and don’t tend to bother the wearer even in such sensitive placements). Pablo says that the procedure went well, although it became quite swollen initially. These healed pictures were taken at eight months.

    Edit/Update: I should add that this implant ended up being removed two years later, because the person it’s on was in nursing school and had some concerns it could affect their career options negatively. The removal procedure was fast and simple. I really hope that people considering body modification procedure always have an “exit strategy”, because it’s quite common for life to change and for one to find oneself needing to “normalize” ones appearance — this is one of the reasons I worry so much when I see teenagers getting irreversible and socially daring procedures like eye tattoos.

  • 13 Year-Old White Ink Palm Tattoo

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    Thirteen years ago Lee got his hand tattooed by machine in white ink by Steve Clark (currently working at Phoenix Tattoo Studio in Raleigh, NC). Palm tattoos are troublesome at the best of times, let alone when in white ink (it’s not so much that white ink is hard to heal — it’s just that it’s more difficult for the artist to work with in general), but as you can see, almost a decade and a half later this tattoo is still remarkably solid. There’s a little variance in line weight, perhaps from Steve hitting the hand harder than he’d normally hit a tattoo to make sure it stayed in place, but the important thing is that it’s there. The yellowing simply reflects Lee’s skin tone — even if the ink is pure white, skin isn’t clear glass (otherwise humans would be freaky walking anatomical-model nightmare fuel) so tinting of this type is normal.

  • No more heart-shaped jewelry allowed?!?!

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    As of September 25, 2012, Haven Body Arts LLC of Northampton, MA has a registered trademark for heart shaped jewelry called “ear-heart”. They are claiming first use as of September 30, 2009, presumably saying this was the invention. So… what do you think? Obviously this is a popular jewelry design that is being widely used all over the world and has been for some time, and “ear-heart” is an obvious but incredibly lame name. But who can show it being used before 2009?

    I know that there are pictures in the BME galleries of it being used — ie. prior art — that is much older than late 2009 — for example, back in 2006 I posted this photo of John Lopez’s work. He was at Slave to the Needle in Seattle by the way. I’m sure I could come up with hundreds of others. I am sure some of them called it an ear-heart. I can’t stand jackasses who try and abuse patent and trademark and other intellectual property law.

    Click the photo of the registration to see Reg #4,215,685 on Trademarkia.

    Note: I should clarify that this trademark almost certainly doesn’t stop anyone for using jewelry of this design, it just stops them from calling it an “ear-heart”. Which is perhaps even sillier since these are such common and obvious words!

  • Second Generation Ear Pointing

    Written by

    Shannon Larratt

    At the start of October I posted about an ear pointing that Samppa Von Cyborg (voncyb.org) had done and included some fresh photos. I’m thrilled today to be able the healed result today, and it’s truly incredible. It’s not just an ear that’s been folded into a point at the top. It’s an ear that’s been completely rebuilt to give the illusion of having grown naturally into this form.

    You may recall the ear pointing trainwreck posted about a month ago. It’s important to understand that the more complicated the procedure gets, the higher the risk of failure, both in terms of full-on failure, and aesthetic mistakes. This is very much the case with advanced ear pointing like this. I’ve been sitting on these pictures for a while, because I don’t have explicit permission to post them, so I’m cropping them more than I want to in order to hide the person’s identity (and really pointing fingers is not my goal), but they show an attempt to do this procedure leaving a customer with an ear that to me looks like the sort of thing a caveman might have after battling a sabretooth tiger. It’s definitely not as gnarly as some procedures-gone-wrong, but it falls far short of what a person should expect — for starters, in addition to the technical aspects of the procedure looking amateur, the aesthetics and angles are nonsensical, and the two ears don’t come close to matching.

    I really want to urge clients to only go to people for work that they can show you multiple healed examples of in their portfolio. And practitioners, there is absolutely no excuse in today’s world for blindly copying procedures you’ve seen more experienced artists post online. Training is available. Take advantage of it. Take it slow. It’s better to be responsible practitioner than to be something akin to a jackass in a comment forum yelling “first”. You don’t want the weight of needlessly messing people up on your conscience. Just remember you’re playing with people’s lives. Do it for them, not for your ego.

Latest Tattoo, Piercing, and Body Modification News