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stretching my ears with tape. is it safe?

earlier today i decided to stretch my ears. some of my friends at school told me ( they have gauges too ) that if you don’t want to go through the pain of strectching your ears, just wrap a little bit of tape around your current piercings. i have the common piercing ( 18g ) so i wrapped the earrings a little bit, put some vaseline on, soaked my ears in warm water and slowly insterted the now thicker piercings. they burned for abut ten minutes but that went away and i wanted to know if it is safe for me to leave these home-made gauges in my ears overnight.

For the sake of your lobes take off the tape, and just go pick up some teflon tape or 16g stretching kit.

ONLY use TEFLON TAPE can be found in the Plumbers asile at Home De[pot or Lowe’s and it’s only 98¢. Any other kind of tape will leach bad chemicals into your body.

NEVER USE VASELINE use soap and water or Vitamin E oil, Jojoba Oil, Emu Oil, or naked oil.

Also stretching doesn’t hurt. If it does, it’s because either they are stretching too fast or skipped a gauge (or two).

Stretching from 18-8g is easy and no pain what so ever if you do it right.

Stretching is a slow process. It’s not a race, if you go fast you will have a blowout, which is a tearing of the lobes which creates scar tissue and deforms the lobes.

Minimum healing time chart between stretches

Fresh piercing to first stretch (18g-16g): Approx 5 to 6 months
16g to 14g – 1 month
14g to 12g – 1 month
12g to 10g – 1.5 months
10g to 8g – 2 months
8g to 6g – 3 months
6g to 4g – 3 month
4g to 2g – 3 months
2g to 0g – 4 months
0g to 00g – 4 months

Remember the slower you go the happier your lobes will be

Never dead stretch (just shoving in the next gauge) Always use a taper, or taping. With Taping add one layer of Teflon tape every 5-7 days, and change the entire wrapping once a month. Once you have a couple layers compare to other gauged jewelry and buy a plug… like say after a while you compare yours to a friend’s 14 or 12g and theirs is either same or a tiny bit smaller then yours then buy that gauge plugs, and then continue taping.

If you decide to go taper for a while I recommend steel over acrylic because they make for a smooth transition. Tapers aren’t meant to be worn for more than 1 hour. And always lube it up with soap and water, Vitamin E oil, Jojoba Oil, Emu Oil, or naked oil before insertion.

While your stretching ONLY wear No Flare or Single Flare plugs and never put Acrylic (it’ll stick and cause infection because it’s a porous material) or Silicone in a fresh stretch, only use glass, steel, titanium, or stone.

You also should give your lobes massages with a moisturizing oil twice a day for beautiful healthy happy lobes, it will also help to make your lobes stretchy. Use Vitamin E oil (found in the capsule pills), Jojoba Oil (find at health/health food stores), Emu Oil, or naked oil.
A couple links:

Stretching kits:

http://www.bodyartforms.com/productdetails.asp?ProductID=3131

Piercing and stretching cleaners and oils:

http://www.bodyartforms.com/products.asp?jewelry=cleansers&filter=customyes

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