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Confused enough with all the naming conventions in PMU?
What are all these terms, Microblading, Microshading, Combo Brows, Nano Brows, Bold Brows, and many more so-called something-Brows?
It's quite confusing when it comes down to PMU (permanent makeup) terms. Even "PMU" itself is causing more than enough confusion, but I'll deal with that in another post and I'll just talk about what Microblading is in this article.
Microblading is pretty straighforward if you are working in the PMU industry. It's a made-up word with "micro" and "blading". Micro means small scale - technically speaking it means one millionth in science or engineering, but we can just say it means very small scale. Just like microchip is a small electronic chip often used in the semi-conductor industry. Blading means, well, some sort of an action using blades. Be careful! So Microblading means it's a act of using blades, which are on a very small scale in size. Following OK so far?
Microblading is a cosmetic tattoo technique for your eyebrows normally done by a handheld pen-like tool. PMU artists will hold the Microblading pen (hopefully perpendicular to your skin) and they will intentionally scratch the surface of your skin very carefully, so the ink (pigments) on the tip of the blades will be placed exactly between the epidermis layer and the dermis layer of your skin. (This is what makes Microblading different from body art work, but I'll also explain this in another post.)
PMU artists can follow certain ratio rules to make the most natrual looking and symmetric eyebrows, but they can be creative in the way of moving their Microblading pen to create various patterns. You may not notice this, but PMU artists have their patterns and actually the number of eyebrow patterns can be their asset making them stand out from other PMU artists. No one wants to have the same mass-produced eyebrow patterns on their own eyebrows, right?
Once Microblading is done, apparently your skin would have gotten scratched. So your skin will try to heal up the wounds. Imagine you fell from a bicycle while riding and got your knee scratched from the fall. Everyone has that experience, right? Then what happens? Your skin will heal over time and the scar will be (almost) gone hopefully. That's what's called "healing" in Microblading. Bicycle accidnet healing time may depend on how hard you fell off of a bicycle, but since Microblading leaves a carefully controlled wound (Remember the blades go only down between epidermi and dermis layer of your skin?), normally healing can take 4 - 6 weeks in Microblading.
With nicely healed up eyebrows, your PMU artists will go through Microblading again. Why? During healing, pigments might have been lost (called "fading"), original shape, pattern, and their definition might have been lost while your skin was healing. Just like you want the scar from a bicycle accident to disappear, Microbladed eyebrows will fade out over the course of 4 - 6 weeks. So in most cases a touch-up session is required to correct any lost color, shape, symmetry, definition. I'm probably using a bad analogy here, but imagine you fell off of a bicyle again and hurt the exact same location of your knee in the exact same way. Maybe the wound on your knee might have gone almost if it was minor, but this time you hurt the exact same location in the exact same pattern like before? Your knee will probably have a mark on it and that mark may stay there for a good amount of time. I admit that I used an unpleasant example (falling off of a bicycle and one more time in 4 weeks, yikes!), but basically the second accident is your "touch-up" process in Microblading.
Even with the touch-up it'll fade out over time. And when you think they faded good, then it's itme for a maintenance touch-up. ;-)
Hope this gives you an idea of what Microblading is and if you want me to educate you on a specific topic or if you want me to go deeper into Microblading and talk more about it, let me know by leaving a comment below. Happy Microblading everyone!