The scarification project - The aftercare

The Following Morning

The after care of scarification isn't easy, but it is necessary to ensure a good resulting scar and no infection. The painful and laborious after care is the reason I said I would never have any more scars done after my first scars in 2011. But I rarely listen to myself!

Day 01: The area is very sore and very stingy, showering is very painful, the hydrogen peroxide bubbles lots and stings like hell when applied. I took about 20 minutes in the shower gently applying the hydrogen peroxide and rinsing off with the shower head on the lowest pressure. Once out of the shower and padded dry, applying the Vaseline on the area is difficult as scar is very tender to the touch. I wrap my self up in cling films and have misfortune to have to go to work.

Day 02 and Day 03 are the same as Day 01, sore, tender and frustrating, I can't run, and I love running, but I love this scar and have to take care of it.

Wrapped up

Day 04 - A small break through the hydrogen peroxide is not longer stinging when I'm cleaning the area in the shower.

Day 05 - I can now rub the sugar along the wounds along with the hydrogen peroxide with out it really hurting.

Day 06 - Starting to feel  a lot more flexible, the tenderness is going too.

Day 07 - Feels like the scars are healing and no longer any discomfort.

Day 08 - Not very sore at all, and I can take the shower at full blast directly on scar.

Day 09 - Very little pain when cleaning now, however it is now feeling prickly and itchy.

After 1 week

Day 10 - Sooooo itchy had an extra lunch time shower just to relieve the frustration.

Day 11 - Having 3 or 4 showers a day to try and calm the itchiness, hardly any pain now when cleaning

Day 12 - The end is near, today is the final day that I have to Vaseline and wrap up in clings film after cleaning

After 12 days of cleaning, and wrapping in cling film I can finally rid myself of the cling film, I am still cleaning with hydrogen peroxide for another 7 days though.

19 days after the scars were done, I can finally stop cleaning s with hydrogen peroxide twice a day, and go go back to normal relaxing showers, although I have changed to a zero perfume, pH 5.5, natural balanced shower gel to avoid any irritations.

After 2 months

The scar is healing nicely now but does feel tight, so I'm regularly stretching by hanging off a chin up bar which is sore but only for a very short time. I'm also back running again which feels amazing. After 3 weeks I feel that the scars are healed, but still starting to raise up, the texture of the scars is incredible.

As I'm writing this blog it's 5 months since I had the work done and the redness is now starting to fade, to a pinky white colour. The scars I had done back in 2011 are still changing, they change colour and texture depending on how hydrated I am and how hot it is. It like having interactive tattoos. This work still has a lot of settling to do and will get lighter and lighter, over the next 6 or 7 months.

After 5 months

Again HUGE thanks to:
Iestyn from Divine Canvas - http://divine-canvas.com/
and
Quentin from Kalima Emporium - http://www.kalima.co.uk/

The scarification project - The big day

It was a pretty early start and a 3 hour drive down to the south coast. Kalima was pretty easy to find and when I got there Quentin was already making a Brew. I needed the coffee and cheeky couple of biscuits to calm my nerves and excitement. We were having a good old chat, when Iestyn must have smelt the Tea and joined us.

Iestyn showed me the design he had done and said that it would look better on my stomach, and it would also make it much easier for two people to work on this area. I loved the design as soon as I saw it. Geometric, intricate and slightly fractal, we played with positioning of the design Iestyn being the perfectionist want the design perfectly centrer on my body, but it turns out my belly button isn't perfectly central to my body. This looked a little odd, So we repositioned the design using my belly button as the centre of the design. Quentin was happy, Iestyn was happy, I was happy!

So I was shaved, cleaned and disinfected and then laid down on the padded bench.

"Ready?"

"Sure, lets go"

The guys spent about an hour with their scalpels cutting the skin along the outline of the design that had been printed on my stomach. It wasn't too painful, on the whole, but every now and again the scalpel would find a more sensitive area and give a real sting, but it was a short lived kick. To be honest the most painful part of the first hour was my arms going numb from having them above my head for so long. 

After a break for tea and biscuits they guys crack on with the scarification. They use a pain numbing gel as they will be cutting a little deeper and wider, the second time round the design. The gel stings like a bastard. This is by far the most painful part of the day. It is fire, it is acid, it is lemon juice in the eye... it is over! The pain goes as quickly as it came. After another cup of tea the anaesthetic has taken hold and the team get back to work. It is a very odd sensation to see two, heavily tattoo'd, scarified, branded, body mod'd men in surgical masks, wearing head torches, deeply concentrating, bent over, cutting into the skin of your stomach, and not feeling any sensation on pain.

The pain free cutting doesn't last forever, there are parts that are more sensitive and the cutting on occasions was very painful. Luckily Quentin has an incredibly wide and eclectic taste in music, focusing on the music and tapping my fingers on my chest helps distract me, and draw focus away from the pain. It took about 3 or 4 hours to complete the second phase of the work, with plenty of tea and biscuit breaks, when I was struggling to cope. When we finally finished they cleaned me up and as they were wrapping me up they notice a couple of lines they had missed on the second phase of cutting.

"No chance, Sorry, I'm done"
The relief of the job being finished was over whelming, it looking incredible, much bigger and bolder than I ever imagined. My bod was shaking from the all adrenalin surging through my body, and I just couldn't face getting back on the table. I confirmed with both Iestyn and Quentin that I was 100% happy with their work and was happy to have my moment of "no more" left as slight imperfection. And hey perfection is over rated anyway.

I got dressed had a very sugary coffee, a handful of biscuits and we stood around chatting about India and Nepal, I would have loved to stay and chat about these wonderful countries, but I had a long drive home, and an overwhelming desire to get home, see the family and get some sleep.

The photo above was taken by Iestyn after finishing the clean up, just before I was wrapped up in cling film.

It is impossible to put into words how professional, talented and dedicated to perfection these two gentleman are. I had spent a huge amount of time researching scarification before I had my first scars done in 2011, Iestyn's name came up over and over again, and when I saw that he was teaching others scarification, it soon became clear he was 'The Man' to go to. So it was a privilege to have him work on my second piece too. Quentin is an absolute gentleman, calm, methodical, and so focused on what the customer wants and needs, it kept me calm and assured at all times. Quentin's portfolio is so long, broad and very impressive so I had 100% confidence in his skills.

The scarification project - The decision

I had few small scars done back in 2011 and have followed Iestyn's work and when I saw this posted on Facebook:

I decided to drop Iestyn a message and offer up my leg for a scarification collaboration:

The next day he came back with a date only 6 weeks away, which was pretty cool: 

This will be the first time I have ever not designed my own work. I usually spend ages designing and tweaking the design before hand. So it was quite a new experience to hand my body over to Iestyn for him to be in complete control:

Iestyn was always in contact making sure everything was OK and if I needed any help getting down to the studio, which was a great help:

With only one day to go I was pretty nervous:

Beard - World Beard and Moustache Championships 2013 - Sunday

Friday
Saturday
Sunday

Today was more about Stuttgart than beards, the flight was cheaper on a Monday than a Sunday so we decided to take an extra day to do some sight seeing around the city. It was a pretty late start to the morning with dull heads and I had a wry smile, waking in the knowledge that I had the tenth best full freestyle beard in the world! THE WORLD! Once we had showered and dressed ourselves we headed to the train station and headed for the city centre. we got the admin task of printing boarding passes out the way first, before finding coffee and pastry based breakfast in a local cafe.

We then spent some time just wondering around the town checking out the local civic buildings and public art, some of which had to be mounted for the camera. I'm not saying we are seasoned subtle travellers, and we are not quite the 'Brits abroad'. We are somewhere in-between. We had walked around the majority of the city before we decided it was time for coffee and cake and found a lovely little theatre cafe, which served great cakes and coffee, the only problem was that we had sat in the smoking part of the cafe, which was a bit of a pain.

After our second cafe stop we went out in search of geocaches and postcards for my gran. Once these tasks were out of the way we were full on culture vultures and went to the Stuttgart fine art and contemporary art gallery, which was huge and had some very interesting art. fine art has never really excited me, but it was a nice way to spend an hour or so. We then headed to the bar were we had arranged to meet a fellow competitor and his mates.

We'll just have a couple of jars as I hate travelling with a hangover.

Well.

That plan didn't last long. Even though it was early November we all stood outside the bar and drank beer, drank wine, ate pizza and with one of the Irish crew pulling out a guitar we formed the 'Smoking elbows'. We sang and drank for hours any passer bys were impromptu-ally serenaded, and frequently joined in the revelry. We partied until the bar closed around midnight and we slowly wondered back to catch the last train back to our hotel.

Beard - World Beard and Moustache Championships 2013 - Saturday

Friday
Saturday
Sunday

It was a thick head and dry mouth that welcomed me to Saturday morning. But a shower and toothbrush soon sorted me out. I started my beard and moustache grooming with curlers and a hair drier to give it the basic shape, neatened and stiffened it up with a little hair 'clay' and moustache wax, before getting my costume on and then heading to Aldi for breakfast and supplies for the day.

If was over whelming at the Filldehalle with bearded chaps wondering around all over the place speaking dozens of different languages, I had no idea what queue to join or where to stand. I found the wonderful gentlemen of the The British Beard Club, who helped point me in the right direction. It took about 40 minutes of queues and forms and being prejudged. "Yes, you have a beard, please continue". It took a while but I was officially entered, registered and qualified to compete. No sooner was I done with the admin side of the day, and the parade started. We where organised by our country and paraded around main hall to the cheers and applause of the spectators and press.

The competition then started. It was running late, but it didn't matter. The first competitions were for those with moustaches. It was great to such an array of different moustache styles, sizes and colours. Everyone was cheering and supporting the more elegant and distinguished of the hairy brotherhood. It was a slow moving procession but great fun to be a part of. Having German beer also helped make things run a little quicker for the spectators. Some of the people i got chatting to were just brilliant fun. not only did they grow their moustache, but they took on the moustaches entire character. I met this wonderful Finnish chap who was robbed of a top three position in the Dali moustache category. He wasn't shy of the camera.

After moustache categories came the partial beard categories, including fu-man-chu, goatee and partial freestyle. The big guns were starting to come out. I also managed to meet one of my bearded heroes, Mr Willi Chevalier who has an incredible white triple loop moustache and beard. Makes my scruffy attempt look rather amateurish. He was a nice chap who didn't speak much, but was happy to a few photos. Once the partial beards had been judged they moved on to the full beards. This was the real deal, with giant beards and some extravagant costumes. It was late in the afternoon now and the beers were slowly taking their toll, it was getting closer to my category so I was drinking more beers and making more trips to the toilets to work in more and more wax.

When it finally came to my category it was touching on 10 pm, the audience were nicely rowdy, with the Swiss supports going crazy with giant cow bells and the loudest cheering. But they were closely followed in the loudest cheering by the Hungarians who shouted loudly and flashed their sabres (not a euphemism) in encouragement to their favourites and countrymen. It was pretty nerve racking standing amongst the greatest beards in the world, but it was also great fun. When I was invited forward to present my beard to the judges and audience I took the opportunity to jump down form the stage and shake each and every hand of the judges as they had had the longest day of everyone here. I small hat trick for the audience and I took my place back in line and cheered and clapped on my fellow competitors.

The scores were read out, and I was not in last place and definitely outside the top three, so I was very happy we watched the closing ceremony with the winners posing on stage for photos and being handed their trophies. It was close to midnight when we started rolling out the conference centre, and someone had left a trophy on the table so I posed for a quick photo. It was too late in the suburbs to find an open bar to celebrate in, so we headed back to the hotel to wash the wax out of the beard and get some well earned shut eye.

This has been an incredible day and i met some incredible people many thanks to all the teams and organisers involved

http://www.worldmoustachechampion.com/neueSeiten/bart/WM%202013%20LE/welcome.html
http://www.wbma.info/
http://thebritishbeardclub.org/

Beard - World Beard and Moustache Championships 2013 - Friday

Friday
Saturday
Sunday

Me and my 2 pals flew over to Stuttgart on the Friday early evening arriving in Stuttgart around 8 pm local time. The passport control staff at airports are usually stern faced and give nothing away. But they have been faced with dozens of hairy travellers who, like me have probably grown their beards since having their passport photos taken. Once through customs it was only a couple of stops on the S-Bahn to our hotel, were we dropped off our kit and headed towards the welcoming party at the venue of tomorrows competition.

We had only walked 10mins before we came across a small bar with the football on, so we wondered in, sat down, and waited to be waited on. The bar maid quickly took our order and it was only a minute before we had our hands on a great pint (500 ml) of cold crisp German Pils. Prost! Stuttgart's football team wasn't doing to well and the bar went deadly quite during the game, so we finished our beer and slipped out nice and quite and paid our tab. It wasn't long before we were at the venue with a new beer in our hand sitting around watching fellow beardy types potter about and talk about curlers, straighteners, waxes, gels and hairsprays. IT was fun but we were starving, and the evening was starting to come to an end here.

We headed off in search of food and found a small Greek bar / restaurant which told us they had stopped serving food but could do a salad for us. This was perfect, we had a salad and a few bowls of French fries washed down with Irish beer and then another German Pils. Once we had our fill we headed back to the hotel to crash out, it had been a long day.

Beard - Practicing for the world championships

Shampoo

Drip Dry

Roll

Sculpt 

Tweak

Divide

Sub Divide