What is Permanent Makeup?
The world of permanent makeup has expanded enormously in the last couple of decades and lots of people, both men and women, are receiving permanent makeup treatment to enhance their natural features and overall, decrease the time and effort spent on achieving their daily look. I’m a licensed permanent makeup artist and owner of Miae Beauty in Boulder, CO, and in this article, I’ll share the low down on what permanent makeup is.
Permanent makeup is also known as cosmetic tattooing or semi-permanent makeup. It is a form of cosmetic treatment that uses a form of tattooing to implant ink onto the skin and mimic a look of makeup. The most popular form of permanent makeup is brow tattoo (also known as microblading, nano brows, ombre brow, shading, etc.), eyeliner tattoo, and lip blushing. These procedures all incorporate tattooing to give definition, shape, and color to areas that you want permanent makeup.
In each of these procedures, the artist often works with their client from pre-care to consultation to after-care, in order to achieve the client’s desired results. Clients come in for numerous reasons - they want more symmetry, they don’t want to waste time in getting ready every morning, they want to fill in sparse areas of their brows, they want to accentuate their cupids bow, etc. Once we discuss the main goal of your permanent makeup, we’ll dive into a deeper discussion on how we can achieve the desired result. The consultations usually take about 30 min to an hour and within this time, we also make sure to do a thorough mapping. The mapping process is extremely important as this provides the guideline and blueprint to where we need to be implanting the ink. The goal of the mapping is to ensure the client and artist are on the same page and that the client will be happy with the shape, color, arch, and stroke pattern before we even put a drop of ink on the client’s skin. Once this is completed, we proceed with the tattooing procedure.
Permanent makeup (cosmetic tattooing) targets a shallower depth for the needle to hit, compared to a traditional tattoo. So while the pain (if at all) should be minimal, it does often take multiple passes for us to correctly implant the ink, making this process a bit longer than your traditional tattoo. Dependent on the client’s skin type and how the skin is reacting to the procedure, artists may choose to incorporate different types of techniques or use different types of needles to ensure we are not traumatizing the skin too much as this can often lead to poor healing and color retention.
Once the procedure is complete, a lot of the healing is now in the client’s hands. Artists should provide a thorough explanation of what the after-care process looks like, what the client should expect in terms of healing process / time.
Once healed, your permanent makeup (cosmetic tattoo) can last from 1-3 years (or more), depending on your skin type, color retention, before/after-care, and artist techniques. Now, you have makeup free, ready to go, permanent makeup done and depending on your preference, schedule your annual touch-up and voila!
If you want to learn more about how to make your permanent makeup last, feel free to check out our post on how to increase longevity on your PMU here!
