Permanent Makeup - FULL LIPS - Palmerton, PA

I am writing this review because I couldn't find any in depth reviews of this procedure and hope to help anyone considering this!

I have hated my lips for as long as I can remember. I have a pale skin tone that has a lot of red in it, and my natural lips were just too red for my tone. When I would eat or drink anything they would turn bright ruby red and it made my whole face look red! I have been using coverup on my lips for the past few years to try and correct it and it looked great, but it would never stay on. I travel all the time, and like to do outdoor activities like surfing, so keeping any lip color on has been impossible. I also have dry lips so the nude coverup would sometimes make it looked even more dry. After a lot of research I decided to get the permanent full lips done.

I live in California, but visit my family in Pennsylvania for extended periods every year. I found a woman who lived about 2 hours away from my family in PA with excellent reviews and 17 years of experience and after emailing her about one million questions, I decided to make the leap.

I had the procedure done yesterday. It started with the initial consultation and signing of wavers. Kelly (my makeup artist) showed me her own permanent lips, eyebrows and eyeliner. She also showed me her college age daughter, who has all 3 done as well. I was very happily surprised to see that someone that young still looked so natural and fresh, and you couldn't tell on either one that the makeup was a tattoo!

Kelly spent a lot of time making sure that we found the perfect, LIGHTER than my natural shade, color. (Please note that the color applied is NOT how it will turn out after healed! She put what looks like a very dark color, but it turns out a light pink when it is healed!) She then spent about 20 minutes drawing the outline of my lips to PERFECTION with a lip lining pencil. She did as I asked and extended the line past my natural lip line, to give me fuller lips. She also showed me that my natural lips had uneven lines, and she made sure she counteracted it.

She then applied a numbing cream and began tattooing. Now, I want to say as a disclosure, Kelly was very generous with the numbing cream, and kept applying it over and over throughout the procedure, but it still hurts a lot!!! I have 3 other tattoos on my body (done with no numbing gel) and this still brought some tears to my eyes. But I believe it will be worth it :)

She traced the outline first (which is the most painful) and then after that was perfect, she filled it in. She was amazing at letting me see them in a handheld mirror every 5 or 10 minutes to make sure I was happy.

When I was finished she gave me the care instructions and applied globs of vaseline. My lips were very sore and extremely swollen. It was a bit difficult to talk and impossible to smile. I took some ibuprofen which helped a bit. I had to run some errands after, please avoid public if possible - I looked like a gothic Angelina Jolie who didn't know how to apply lipstick! lol

Lips were very swollen again when I woke up on day 2. I kept my lips completely slathered in Vaseline. I had to eat foods with a fork and place them in my mouth, making sure not to touch the lips at all. I also had to use a straw to drink anything, per the healing instructions. Lips were starting to scab already, and I was not allowed to touch them except to apply Vaseline.

Day 3 I had to go back to work. My lips were about half peeled. I had to really fight the urge to pick off the scabs! My makeup artist told me that if some were already loose, it was ok to gently wipe them away with a q-tip and Vaseline. I did this a little, to try to even it out for work. I also ended up putting a light coating of lip color over top so the contrast wasn't so bad. I definitely got looks from my coworkers, but the truth is everyone just thought I was wearing really dark lipstick. Even my coworker who knew I was getting the procedure done, didn't know it was a tattoo! Was loving the pretty pink underneath color!