Lip-Lightning​
Dark lips color correction with lip PMU-Lightning Blush.
Lips come in all colors, sizes and shapes. Let’s talk about lip-lightning, this could be a life changing procedure for many of you that struggle with discolored lips. Dark lip guests typically expect their lips to be even toned and lighter. While pale lips clients wish to define vermilion border and have more color coverage.
Every client requires a different approach to reach the best outcome, simply because every lip is unique. Especially dark lips correction has been controversial for many years in the pmu industry, however it keeps getting more popular with female and male clients who wish to correct or lighten their lips. Many artists don’t like to work on dark lips because it is hard to get a good result. This is for sure a specialty area of work I LOVE.
Not every client is the right candidate for dark lips color correction
Many Cosmetic PMU artists will reject clients with darker lips. This is because not every client is the right candidate for this treatment.
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Melanin rich skin is very tricky to work on. Ethic lip correction is an extremely advanced technique that requires knowledge of color theory and right color selection.
During the first dark lips correction session it is important to neutralize cool tones and lift the darkness of the lip with the help of warm based pigment such as yellow or orange depending on the tone of the lip being treated. From there I would then work with red based pigments.
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Before dark lips correction
Before lip tattooing is it important to ask the client during the consultation about the skin healing reactions to the wounds. Does their skin heal lighter or darker than their skin tone after scratch or injury?
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If the darkness in the lips is associated with any trauma, you should avoid this procedure! The procedure could cause hyper or hypo pigmentation. African-American skin, along with Hispanic and Asian skin, is more prone to hyperpigmentation.
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If the client has evidence of hyper, then the trauma to the skin can create more hyper spots. Moreover the trauma from the procedure can create darker pigmentation in already melanin rich skin, aside from pmu pigment implanted.
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Hypo pigmentation refers to white patches of skin that are lighter than your overall skin tone. Your skin's pigmentation, or color, is based on the production of a substance called melanin. If your skin cells don't produce enough melanin, the skin can lighten or get light spots.
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Discolored lips:
can be the result of a few things that range from harmless, like staining from certain foods or drinks, to an underlying medical condition.
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Trauma or injury. A bruise can form on one or both lips following an injury. This can cause your lips to be partly or entirely purple or black.
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Smoking, the burns from the cigarette can cause a black spot on your lips
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Lack of Vitamins such as B12
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Dehydration-Inadequacy of water in the body resulting in lips during and cracking causing
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Minor injuries, scars
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Hyperpigmentation is also called Melasma. This is an abnormal increase of the melanin on the skin especially on the lips which is a result of prolonged exposure to the sun or licking your lips too much.
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Hormone disorder in the body (the thyroid problems)
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Certain medications also could cause darkening of lips for example phenytoin
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Too much caffeine
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Lip sucking
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Allergic reactions to foods, toothpaste, lipstick or cosmetics
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Lips that turn blue may be a sign that there’s not enough oxygen available from the bloodstream
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Certain chemicals in lipsticks may also cause rashes and pigmentation so it’s good to know the ingredients and work with natural lipsticks
Spotted lips
Discolored lips can include spotting, too. The causes of spotted lips range from harmless sunspots to spots that are a symptom of a medical condition. Many clients complain about lack of pigmentation in the lips after multiple cold sores, caused by herpes simplex virus. Those white spots could be covered with lip tattoos, however sometimes it requires few sessions to implement the pigment.
​Discolored Lips​
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Vitiligo is a long term genetic skin condition in which the cells that produce melanin, the substance responsible for skin color, die or stop functioning, causing white patches to appear. The goal is to make skin more even, bring back the color by tattooing with pigment matched with skin tone. Lips that are discolored or uneven in color can be filled in with natural lip colors.
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There’s also the risk of koebnerization, which is the response of the skin to trauma that revels in new patches emerging, may result from either a linear exposure or irritation. The Koebner phenomenon, first described in 1876 by Heinrich Koebner, is the appearance of new skin lesions on previously unaffected skin secondary to trauma.
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Any lip correction is not going to happen during one session, especially ethnic lips correction is a multiple session treatment. Only gentle technique and the right color match could do the work. It is important to choose pigments with a safe amount of Titanium Dioxide (white pigment) and high pigment concentration. Correction of bluish or purplish lips is not an easy case, actually it is a very challenging task!
Dark Lips correction in steps​
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To cancel out the darkness and even out the lip color you will need multiple sessions 3 are required & included.
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During first session, I will be using a yellow or orange pigment to Lighten the Lip tone and create an even colored canvas to prep your lips for implication of your target lip color.
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At your Follow-Up session, I will check healed results and decide to either repeat the same process, due to pigment loss during healing or Move forward to the targeted color 💖
The best colors to neutralize cool/dark lips in this type of corrections include:
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Gold/yellow tone - I especially recommend this for lips with deep, dark purple undertone. This will heal warm pink.
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Orange/bright warm tone, I use this corrector on light-medium dark lips with bluish tones. This will bring the lip to a healed pink tone.
After a neutralization session in most cases after 6-8 or more weeks, if the healed result is good, the I can move to targeted color. I always implant warm target colors. I will not Iimplant cool colors like reds with blue, violet or carbon black undertones when working on dark lips. This is highly detrimental to the lightning process.