Permanent makeup: how to deal with other people's mistakes?

Nadezhda Kosolapova, cosmetologist, PM master teacher , speaker of conferences on permanent makeup, organizer of the 1st and 2nd Crimean conferences on PM, chairman of the jury of the 1st Crimean permanent makeup championship, winner of the Leader of the Year 2017 award, founder of the Crimean club of PM masters (Simferopol) , Crimea)

This is not to say that mistakes are bad. Mistakes are our experience! An invaluable experience that allows you to develop and become better. There are a number of factors that simply need to be taken into account. And in my article I want to talk not only about the most common mistakes, but also about how to solve them. After all, each master has to work not only with clean skin, but also with the one that already has permanent makeup. In my opinion, creating a new masterpiece can be very difficult if our “canvas is already painted a little”. True, there are clients for whom it is easy to remodel, but there are also those for whom it is almost impossible to change the appearance without laser correction or another method.

In different years, permanent makeup has different trends. As a rule, fashion lasts from one to three years, and sometimes this becomes an obstacle for us, because it is difficult to imagine how, for example, on a dense eyebrow five years ago, to perform a light, powdery permanent without color correction, for which the client is either not mentally ready, or for this you need to go to another city, which will require time and money. Again, we run into the client's decision and our own, where some of the masters will refuse to work with the client, and some will perform the shadow technique. However, there are those masters, as a rule, they are beginners, who are still experimenting and will apply powder technique to what is available and see what happens. There was a time when it was fashionable to do microblading, brown lips and perform various thin forms of eyebrows, visually enlarge lips. Let's look at the most common permanent makeup mistakes.

Twos in the master's diary

Permanent makeup of the lips extending beyond the lip, onto the skin (photo 1).

It becomes darker over time, these are natural processes, if you know the composition of the dye. But only if the main efforts were directed to the contour of the lips, and the stretching of the color itself was not so carefully worked out. Also, do not forget that over the years, wrinkles appear in women, and this further emphasizes the unwanted color. It is worth remembering that an uneven contour will add to your hassle due to the fact that the dark color will need to be neutralized, and in places of the supplemented contour, you need to carefully select the color so that when healing it looks uniform, without transitions. To do this, you can perform a gradient of a new color from a dark contour to a light shade in the mucosa, but only if the color of the previous contour is not very different from the rest of the color of the lips (photo 2–3).

Thin skin on the lips at the junction of the mucosa and in the corners of the lower lip. If there is dryness on the lips, it is better to remove it before the procedure or recommend pre-procedural care for the lip area for more comfortable work. The contour should not be strengthened in the corners of the lower lip. I advise you to start work, stepping back a little from the corner, then return to this place, due to the fact that in these places the skin is very thin and there is a high probability that the dye will deepen into the skin. The example clearly shows where the pigment is most deeply laid, and these spots and stripes will be with the client for many years (photo 4).

And it is extremely difficult to cover them in such a color scheme, because they will highlight the new layer of dye that you will lay. The next photo is the same case when the master worked deeply and roughly (photo 5).

According to the girl, she had blood flowing from her lips for several more days, and then everything took on a very terrible crust, after which herpes also appeared. She did not make a correction and in general for several years was afraid to do anything with her lips. We performed three nano-resurfacing procedures, which made it possible to lighten the dye and even out the scars. At the moment, permanent makeup is done, we continue to work with scars near the lip contour (photo 6).

The next client was harmed not by the tattoo pigment, but by the tattoo pigment in inept hands. This photo shows well how you can get black and blue from a brown tattoo pigment after a few years. And all this is only because the color scheme, the behavior of the pigment in the skin and its components are not taken into account. This can be attributed to the flies (photo 7-8).

In this case, neutralizers are not added. As for the flies, I could recommend the following: before making a dot on the client's skin with the device, look at the nearby moles and repeat their color scheme in several shades. As I already wrote, knowledge of color is very important for a permanent makeup master. The following client had two brow PM treatments by the same stylist. The first procedure, as a result of healing, gave her a headache: her eyebrows turned pink-red. And on the correction, the master showed her the brown color of the dye and performed an additional procedure. This was a mistake, because the result was not brown, but with a purple tint (photo 9).

All this happened only because the master did not neutralize the previous (first) layer of dye. According to my assumptions, in the process of working with laser color correction, the pigment placed in the first layer was not yet familiar to the master or the important conditions for working with the dye of this company were not studied. Since, in order to know how the pigment will behave, you need to either thoroughly study it and have all the necessary palette of one company from the “officials”, or work on this pigment at least two, stuffing bumps. What is left after one laser correction procedure (nozzle 1046) can be seen in photo 10.

There is one more reason to write about coloristics - due to the fact that the structure and color of the mature skin of women differs from the young structure in its elasticity, the location of capillaries and blood vessels, and pigmentation. A typical beginner's mistake when working with mature skin is when the dye is applied too tightly and deep (photo 11).

After all, if you lay the dye below the papillary layer of the dermis, the color will already change towards a cold shade. But what pleases in this photo is the rather light tails of the eyebrows, they are done correctly, only the color scheme failed, well, the shape. "Two tails, four eyebrows." This, it seems to me, is faced by everyone and often, but what to do in these situations? If your client asks you to lift her eyebrow ponytail, first, refer her to laser color correction or a remover, as there is a huge chance that she will get her long-awaited ponytails and not go to remove the old ones. Others will not know why she did this. As in the saying "Who is the last, he is to blame" (photo 12).

There is another reason: you will see the result of the removal and you will be able to take action or refer to a beautician to restore the skin in this place (photo 13).

Secondly, if you nevertheless took it, step back 1 ml from above and below, drawing a sketch with a pencil, that is, expand it, this will allow you to stay in a new form where the old permanent will not be visible. I will give an example from practice, when one of the ponytails changed after three or four years. The following complex of necessary procedures was carried out - eyebrow refresh and laser correction of a tiny piece of the old ponytail, which allowed the girl to feel confident. The photo shows a healed refresh and the remainder of the previous color, which needed an additional laser correction procedure (photo 14).

Summing up, I will say that I see the point in taking on changes in the tail of the eyebrow only if you have the opportunity to expand the shape (while deviations from the shape should be minimal) or clean up the old PM with a laser or remover on the same day. You just need to remember that even in the case of laser correction, not always everything will be fine with a critical change in the shape of the eyebrow. The photo shows a case in which, according to the client, about 12 laser correction procedures have already been completed (photo 15).

We learn from mistakes

When the tattoo industry began to develop, the bulk of the masters learned to frame first, and then fill in the body of the eyebrow. Here is an example of what such work can lead to (photo 16).

I omit the question of the shape of the eyebrows - everything is clear here anyway. I want to emphasize: in order to fix the sketch, it is enough to put dots or mark the sketch with diluted paint, it is important not to work a lot in the same place. And one more "demonstrative" work, although in this case the master put more effort into the internal filling of the eyebrow (photo 17).

A common mistake is one eyebrow is darker (the pigment lies deeper), and the second one is lighter. A dark eyebrow can be obtained under the condition of a long work on it, an uncomfortable landing of the master and the absence of checking your work immediately after the procedure. If, immediately after the procedure, the master had analyzed his work and added in the missing places, such a difference could have been avoided (photos 18–19).

Such errors can only be corrected if the skin is translucent. Be sure to meet with the client, take a photo and look at the transparency of the skin on your camera. If you're not sure if the eyebrows can be redone, take additional flash photos and compare. If in comparison it is clear that the eyebrow in one photo is darker, then the overlap is almost impossible (photo 20-22).

Attempts by the master to cover the old permanent makeup without knowing the composition of the pigment and color, alas, sometimes look deplorable. Everything comes with time. If there is a goal, you can always find a way out of the situation, even if there is no laser in your area / village / city. The photos shown are before fixing and the healed overcoating work, which was laborious, where three correctors and two colors were used to create a new look (photos 23-24).

In life, we all have the right to make mistakes, but is it worth it? It is good in our profession to have like-minded people and mentors. I personally select specialists for myself and do not hesitate to contact them with questions or for help. Find colleagues from whom you can draw experience, pass MC and just communicate, and there will be fewer mistakes and more experience in your life! All photographic material is the personal archive of the author.

The material was first published in Permanent No. 1(13)/2019