*when* do we meet again?
She's over here trying to be cute with this blog title ("she" means...me). What she's really trying to say (again, me) is: here is the information you need to know regarding maintenance of your brow tattoo.
I get the question "am I ready to come back in?" a lot and I'm always happy to answer it. Of course I am. I love you little peaches and your brow questions. But for the sake of simplicity, a blog post that stays forever posted on my site could definitely be helpful. So here we go.
You've already done the things. You had your brows done. YAY. Then... you were an A+ student and you came in for your follow up appointment 10-12 weeks later. Because you're a baddie with a face tattoo, you know this is a required thing. This is a two part process honeyyyyy.
Now, it has been awhile.... you're looking at your brows, and they are fading a bit. The rate at which your brows fade varies from person to person. Sometimes you could be seeing a lot of fading at 8 months out...some clients are good for 2 years. The common themes that do speed up the fading process are: oily skin types and the use of prescription strength Retinoids.
There are other variables that we can add to the category of "things that speed up fading" but I find that these two are the biggies.
So, how do you know when you're ready to get them "refreshed?"
This is how I explain it. When I think of implanting pigment into your skin, I am envisioning the game Tetris. All of the pigment particles are little Tetris blocks, building up on top of each other one by one. If we didn't allow the Tetris blocks to cancel each other out and decrease the overall amount of stacked up blocks, and then we add MORE Tetris blocks... we would have a problem.
First, you've lost the game. Like, literally... and if you don't know this Tetris reference I don't know what to tell you. Second, when the Tetris blocks are pigment particles, this means there is literally no space for these particles to "land" aka implant.
What that looks like is pigment that begins to become one big blob; the particles are blurring out and converging together. We have lost any definition of hair strokes and more importantly, we have lost the definition that the un-tattooed skin provides. This creates the "space" in between hair strokes.
This Tetris analogy also applies to brow techniques that are powder brows or fully shaded brows. We want to maintain that softness..."airiness" if you will. If we don't wait for those Tetris blocks to go down, we get some bold and heavy shaded brows. We're not doing that.
So here's what to look for before refreshing them browz:
an overall loss of color. Ideally, we are looking for at least 60% faded from when they were first healed.
the shape is losing definition.
I hope this information helps you determine when you're ready to get back in the tat chair. The most important takeaway here: if you have hair stroke brows and you are missing a few strokes here and there, that is normal. Also, I will acknowledge that it is *annoying*, but missing a few hair strokes doesn't necessarily mean your skin (and the rest of your brows) are ready to be touched up.
Please please please, if you're ever confused on this, go ahead and email me at emily@emilymercerbeauty.com.
I appreciate you all and I hope you're enjoying December however feels best to you.
Until next time.
xo
Emily