{Piercing Aftercare}

• The most important thing to remember is to keep your hands clean before touching your new piercing. Avoid over-the-counter products such as alcohol, peroxide, bactine or neosporin since these are a bit harsh on the delicate tissue healing around the jewelry.

• Products you should be using to care for your new piercing are saline spray or a mild soap like “Cetaphil” but warm water is also fine. Use no more than two times daily. Mix a small amount of your product with warm water to create a solution and gently apply with a cotton bud.

• Remember, over-cleaning your piercing can cause more harm than good. Minimal care is best.

• Treat your new piercing as you would a cut. Minimize picking, playing with, and touching your new piercing with unclean hands. Similar to a cut, your piercing will scab around the sides and accumulate some discharge (typically a yellowish/white color, which can harden into a crust). This is the sign that your piercing is healing healthily. Do not panic. Picking this away will cause irritation to your piercing, prolong healing time, and leave a more pronounced scar once healed. To safely clean discharge/crusty matter, only use aforementioned soap and warm water to gently wash it away.

• While cleaning your new piercing, it is not necessary to rotate or move the jewelry back and forth. If the jewelry does move freely while cleaning, that is fine. Make sure not to force it to move.

• For the first 7-10 days after receiving your piercing, avoid exposing it to shared/ public bodies of water (ie: pools, hot tub, sea, etc...).

• Bruising and swelling is totally normal for a piercing and can take a couple of days to come out.

• Jewellery should be left in your piercing for approximately 2 months before changing it. For any piercing done with a "stud" (ie: barbell or labret style jewelry), the ends can be changed while leaving the post/labret in the piercing. This is safe to do within the first 2 months.

• Don't risk removing a new piercing on your own, even for a few hours, as your body will start to close the piercing hole.

• ** All healing times are general time frames. Everybody heals at a different rate. If the piercing itself is tender to the touch or the surrounding skin is pink or dry, give your body a bit more time to heal.

• The higher up in the ear your piercing is, the longer it normally takes to heal. A more complexed area, such as the Conch/industrial/orbital/Diath/Rook can take up to a year to fully heal. Healing can be a fairly up and down process with keyloid lumps being very normal- These can come and go and it a sign that your body is attempting to heal and accept the piercing.

• I advise NOT to take your piercing out for more than a few hours until over a year after you have had your piercing. Chances are, it’ll close up very quickly beforehand.