Valentines Trunk Show! <3

Yup Yup!  It will be the perfect opportunity to check out some cool goodies you can get for that someone special!

There will be lots of goodies, trinkets, paintings, etc. as well as new art on our walls by Nick Anderson!

Click Here to Visit His Website!

We are still running the Valentines Special, so come in before it’s over!  For a limited time only, you can get pink, purple and red gems for the price as a plain ball end, and get those risque piercings for cheaper!  Do it before Valentine’s Day and surprise your special someone with something new! 

On to photos of work we’ve done recently.  We know you’re all constantly on the edges of your seats waiting for our next installment of awesome piercings, so here ya go:

Meet Julian!  Friends with our other client Sila, they both came in one day and Julian got a super fabulous philtrum piercing by me (Sammy)!  I loved the super blingy fuschia gem we used!

We also got to check up on Sila’s nape that we posted a little while ago.  It looks like it’s healing up well!  She came in yesterday and left with a new rook piercing as well!  Photos of that will come when it’s had time to settle in. 

Next up: Another rad surface piercing by Mateo!

This was done on a friend of ours.  He came all the way from Soledad for this little gem.  We used a teeny little 16g surface bar from Anatometal, with these fancy little black discs we custom ordered for him from Industrial Strength.  Came out wonderfully!  Hopefully he’ll be back later and we can get some photos again after it has had time to heal.

Above is a 16g Septum piercing by Mateo.  The client chose this jewelry.  A snug fitted circular barbell that doesn’t overpower her cute face!

A friend of the septum above, this young lady requested a monroe piercing.  It took a couple tries to get the mark where she wanted, but after that the piercing went smoothly, with very little discomfort to her!  She was a bit nervous before we got started, but she didn’t feel much until I was tightening the jewelry!  Sometimes, surprisingly enough, tightening the jewelry is the most uncomfortable part of the piercing.  We try our best to be gentle! 

Up next…a whole SLEW OF EAR PIERCINGS!

We love doing ear piecings!  In these days where you can go to the mall and get ear lobe piercings for less than $20 it’s hard to convince people to spend the extra dollars to have them done by a professional, but when we do, the results are always great!

Ear lobe piercings are pretty resilient piercings, but if you don’t start them out with appropriate jewelry and aftercare, they can take quite awhile to heal.  Start your piercings off the right way, with high quality jewelry and a proper aftercare routine!

And last but certainly not least, another philtrum piercing!  We’ve gotten to do a lot of these recently, and they’re so fun!  My favorite thing about this piercing, is that it really accentuates your lips! 

Ta-ta for now, interwebs!  We will be back again with more photos later!

Don’t forget to stop by for the trunk show!  There will be TONS of cool stuff to look at and even more cool stuff to buy for your special somebody!

Valentines Day Special!

yup Yup YUP!  Our Valentines Day special is starting up NOW!  We’re offering $5 Off Intimate Piercings (Tongue, Nipple & Genital) as well as $5 Off Red, Pink & Purple Gem Ends!

That means you can get those colored ends for the same price as a standard ball end!  And for those interested in getting some more adult piercings, there’s a tidy little discount in store for ya!

But enough about money, we’ve got more photos to share! 

Let’s start it off with Tida’s belly button piercing!

I know I’ve said before that we love to do navel piercings, but I never explained that not quite everyone has the right anatomy to get the piercing.  There are many different belly buttons, and some of them allow the piercing to heal more easily than others.  Typically, the shallow navel that has a defined lip will yield an optimal navel piercing.  Not everyone has that particular belly button, though!  Some clients, like the one pictured below, have a deeper navel that doesn’t quite fit the typical navel jewelry style and have a harder time healing.  She had her navel pierced before, but the piercing had met its demise due to a softball game incident.  She wanted it redone, so I ordered her a slightly different piece of jewelry that would allow her to have the same aesthetic as a typical navel piercing and improve her chances of healing the piercing.  Here is the result:

If you have a deeper navel and you want to get your belly button pierced, come have a talk with us.  We can discuss your options and figure out whether or not you can have it done!

Next up:  LOTS of surface work…so hold onto yer butts!

This 12g 1″ Nape Surface was done by Mateo on a return customer, Sila, who we quite enjoy having in to the shop.  She donated cans both times, and has been an awesome client!  She had us anodize the titanium discs a cool ice blue color that was very subtle, but looked great in contrast to her skin tone!

I (Sammy) previously did an eyebrow piercing on her, and it seems to be healing up quite well!  Pictures below:

Moving on, we have a single 12g 7/8″ Chest Surface by Mateo with plain titanium discs a couple weeks into healing:

A friend of the girl above got a 14g Surface Anchor with a titanium disc that we anodized a nice “Blurple” color that same night.

We can anodize the titanium jewelry  at our shop to many different colors!

If you’re not so into gemstones, this is a cool, cost effective alternative!

Yet another viable option for the placement of a surface piercing is pictured below:

12g 3/4″ Lower Back Surface Piercing With

Special Ordered Moonstone Cabachon Gems

Next up:  6x Surface Anchors on a client who found us via Myspace!

6x 14g Surface Anchors w/

3mm, 4mm & 5mm

Dark Blue Fauxpal Cabachon Gems

Mateo and I did these anchors tandem!  He took the left side, and I took the right, and we pierced her in unison.  The procedure went very smoothly, and she was in and out pretty quickly! 

That’s it for surface anchors and piercings for now.  I have photos of two more piercings for today.  First, a nostril piercing done in front of an existing piercing:

And last, but certainly not least, a 6g philtrum piercing I (Sammy) did on our friend Ari!  She’s a little lady, with big piercings, and she’s awesome!

Her piercing was done initially with a black glass piece from Gorilla Glass.

We can use glass to do initial piercings safely and discreetly for those who cannot have piercings visible at the workplace or at home.  The glass we use is free of lead and inert in the body.  Perfect for those who need to hide a piercing.  At least until it becomes well enough healed that you can switch the jewelry easily for whatever occasion calls for “invisible” piercing jewelry!

That’s it for today, folks!  I hope this can hold you over until we collect more photos for you!  Until next time…stay dry!  Stay warm!  Stay safe!

And if you feel like bedazzling your bits, or gifting yourself or someone you like with some special gem ends, come see us!

<3

Ask and you shall receive…

I promised a huge photo dump when Mateo got back, and guess what…?  It’s just as I suspected.  Tons of great photos of awesome new stuff.    I think you will all be pleased.  So let’s get this party started!

First off, a little punk’n pie!  Cute alterna-dude with two side lip rings by Mateo.  I believe they are fresh in this photo, but they’re not swollen or red!  Thumbs up all the way around.

Here we have an eyebrow Mateo did before he left on his trip!  A nice dainty 16g piece, healing up very nicely after only a couple weeks.

Left and Right: A set of fresh 12g ear lobe piercings.  This guy brought in some cans, and got pierced for less than $35 for the pair!

This is a great little surface anchor project that Mateo collaborated with Didier Suarez of Enigma Professional Piercing in San Diego, CA to complete.  The client looks stoked on the end result!

Surface anchors are really versatile little piercings.  They are not typically very painful, and can really give you a unique look that cannot be obtained via other typical body piercing jewelry.  Mateo and I are teaming up to do a slightly smaller project on a young lady before the new year!  We will surely have photos of those after the holidays are over.  Definitely keep checking back for updates if you enjoy the look of this type of piercing!

This is just your typical cartilage piercing.  Nothing too special about this one, except for the awesome little star end on the jewelry she is wearing!  We have these star ends available now!  Hurry in and grab one for your favorite piercing or piercing enthusiast today!

Matching side lip piercings, by Mateo while he was guesting at Enigma in San Diego.  They came out so perfect!

Have I mentioned how much we LOVE doing navel piercings?  Well, if I haven’t…we REALLY LOVE doing navel piercings.  Winter is actually the best time to do it!  During winter, you’re bundled up, not swimmin’ around in public water!  If you get your piercing BEFORE summer rolls around, it will likely be nicely healed, and you won’t have to worry about staying out of the water (especially if you’re a hot surfer babe…surfing on a fresh piercing is a big no-no!).  Plus, you can show it off all you want, and you won’t have bloodiness, crustiness, or dry flaky new skin!  Ladies and Gents!  If you want your navel pierced, come get ‘em before summer gets too close!

Meet Travis.  He brought in 10 cans for the Holiday Food Drive for the Second Harvest Food Bank!  This lowered the cost of his 14g paired nostrils by about $20!  We really enjoyed working with him, and hope he comes back often.  Piercing fine young men like him is always a treat!

Last but not least, our good friend Mark (aka: Freshman) got his ear lobes enlarged and redirected.   The procedure went VERY smoothly, with a bit o blood, but not more than expected.  His ears went from 1.25″ to 1.375″.  Not a particularly large jump, but definitely something he had been looking forward to for quite some time.  Behold!  The glory!

Well that is it!  I’ve dumped the best of the photos we’ve collected the past couple weeks on ya!    I hope you all enjoy, and have a wonderful holiday, whichever it may be!

Also, please don’t forget, the food bank really needs donations this year!  Even if you’re not getting pierced, we still appreciate any and all donations toward the food drive!  If you are planning on getting pierced, come in before the end of the year!  You can save up to $20 on piercings just by donating the stuff that’s been sitting around your pantry!  Hope to see y’all soon!

Meet Parker!

This young man we have here is quite awesome!  He’s a dancer/teacher, and he’s trying to get his foot in the door for the next Cirque du Soleil!  Wish him luck, and send positive vibes his way!

He previously had his lowbrets pierced by Mateo, and came in today to get his jewelry downsized.

While we were working on switching his jewelry to  shorter length, he asked if he could get a piercing too, which was totally OK with me!  He asked to get his tongue web (otherwise known as your lingual frenulum) pierced, and so I did!

I hope everything heals up nicely for him!

Next I just wanted to share some a super cute nostril piercing that I did on our tattoo apprentice Katie.  She had one existing piercing, and wanted another in front of it.  We switched out her initial healing jewelry to some yellow gold ball ended nostril screws a couple nights ago, and they look great!

Very subtle and classy!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Don’t forget, our Holiday Food Drive is still going all the way until December 31st!  Donate some foods, and get pierced for cheap!

We also have gift certificates available!  You can purchase one in any amount!  Great for any person who has been thinking about getting pierced, or someone who has an existing piercing and wants some new jewelry!

Hello Everyone!  I hope everyone survived the torrential downpour of this past week without too much inconvenience.  The power actually went out here at the shop for about 1.5 hrs!  It was kind of nice.  We were all hanging out in the evening glow.

So to get to the point of why I signed on today…I just wanted to share these photos with you! (as usual)

It was really too cute and too sweet to NOT post.  So here we go.  A couple who were referred to us by our friends at Industrial Tattoo in Berkeley:

This sweet couple called the Way Body Arts phone line asking about tattoos.  This happens relatively regularly, as we are in the same space as the Chimera Tattoo Studio, and I answered their questions and asked them to stop in!  Upon their arrival, they were both just wonderful, upbeat individuals.  I asked them what prompted them to get tattooed so late in their lives (although you are NEVER too old to get tattooed), and they told me that she had been working in a seminary and had created this celtic cross design that they had fabricated and hung in the seminary.  When she returned to the seminary recently, a young man came up to her and showed her that he had gotten her cross design tattooed on his arm!  She was so excited and honored that she decided she needed to have one too.    And, so she says, her husband didn’t want to be left out!

I guess now that you’ve gazed upon the cutest couple EVAR, you might not be so thrilled about anything else I include in this post…so I’ll save up the pictures I’ve got for a mega-post later!  We’ll have TONS for you to look at after Mateo gets back from San Diego!

Stay tuned!

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Just a Quickie!

Hey y’all!

Just checkin’ in to drop a couple photos, and let you know how things are going!

The food drive is going even better than we could have hoped.  It hasn’t been too long now, and we’ve almost filled one barrel chock full o food!    I think the food bank will be pleasantly surprised with out contribution!  Please tell your friends about this great deal!

Bring in non-perishable food items, and get pierced for as low as $17 including jewelry!!!

Scroll down for more details [read the flier!]

Here we have a young lady who came in to get her tongue pierced.  She had it pierced a couple times before, and it had not worked out for various reasons.  After I pierced her, I asked her what she thought of the way that we did things compared to the other times she had the piercing done.  She happily told me that “this was way better”!

We constantly strive to provide our clients with an experience that is above and beyond what they expect from the typical piercing shop.  Hearing feedback like this helps us know that we are doing things right! 

This is a piece I have been really excited to work on.  It was at the request of a distant friend online.  This material is a very unique variety of petrified wood.  The blue color is not very common, and the rusty browns and oranges really make this a striking piece of jewelry!  Hopefully, now that people have seen what this material looks like worked up into a wearable form, I will get more requests to have pieces made from it!

I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got for today.  I’ve been super busy with the shop and jewelry making, so there hasn’t been a whole lot of picture taking.

Come on out and get pierced! 

Neon Electric!

Check out our new signs! Our signage isn’t completely finished yet, as we’re still waiting on one crucial little component that should arrive in the next few days, but most of it is done!

You can spot this neon from both Fair Avenue, as well as Almar Avenue!

I also wanted to take this time to note that we do have GIFT CERTIFICATES available for purchase!  Can’t think of something to get your loved one?  Whether they’ve got regular ear piercings, or other body piercings, stop by and we can discuss CUSTOM ORDERS, or write you up a gift certificate so they can choose for themselves!

OH!  And before we forget to post it here for you faithful readers to take advantage of:  On this FRIDAY THE 13TH, we’re cutting our service fee price to a flat $13!!  That’s right!  Bring in your own jewelry [please, high quality only!], or buy some from us, and get pierced for half the cost!

$13 Piercings on Friday the 13th!!!

We hope everyone is having a most wonderful week!

Discounted Piercings!!

Or You Can Donate By Clicking Here!

Halloween in Santa Cruz!

Hey everyone!

Halloween here in Santa Cruz was awesome!  They cordoned off the main drag downtown, Pacific Avenue, and everyone got to parade up and down the street in their amazing costumes!  There was music, performers, dancing, and US!

We completed the Halloween Ritual with play piercing and a small 3-way energy pull.  Pictures below!

 

These were our costumes.  Mateo called me early in the afternoon to request I make him some sort of loin cloth and matching tribal garb for myself.  We had been so busy up to this point that we hadn’t much thought about what we would dress up as, but I think this worked out VERY well!  All night we got people asking us if we were dressed as characters from the movie “Apocalypto”.  We weren’t, but our costumes were appreciated nonetheless!

 

Mark (“Freshman”) was the first to be pierced.  He has suspended before, so this experience was nothing new to him.

Brittany was the next one up!  She was a virgin to the body ritual procedure.  Never been hooked before, but eager and excited to experience something new!

Before I threw the hooks for Mateo, we each did a third eye piercing on the other!  The play piercing needles were very thin, so they didn’t hurt much.  Hence, the big smiles!  Hahaha!

Mateo’s hooks are in!

The sun came and went, and the group pulled really hard!  There was a lot of energy bouncing around, but it was getting really chilly, so they called it quits.  Until….

We went downtown and they boys pulled me around Pacific Ave in a shopping cart! 

People were freaked out, and excited, and intrigued, and all kinds of different reactions all at once!

If you know of anybody who has pictures of us, please leave a comment!  We’d love to see any of the pictures people snapped while we were out performing!

 

So, that was halloween!  I’ve got TONS more photos to look over and post, so stay tuned!  Hopefully they’ll be up by the end of the week!

Long time no post!

Sorry for the long wait between posts, folks!  We experienced a very saddening hard drive crash a week ago!  We lost a lot of great photos when the computer died, but I fixed it up a few days ago, and we’re back up and running smoothly.  We’ve also been keeping ourselves pret-ty dern busy lately, so posting is something we have had very little time for.  Awesomely enough, despite our spot of bad luck there are some very nice new things for you to look at!

This young lady waltzed in on a particularly yucky day!  It was raining cats and dogs out, and she walked all the way to the shop to get some anchors below her navel.  She expressed to me that she had wanted three navel piercings, but her navel was not suited for it.  So, she wanted the anchors instead.  This photo is from a week or so after the initial piercing.  Please excuse the bruise!

Most people seem to be under the impression that ear lobes are easy to pierce!  This is not true, ladies and gents!  In fact, ear lobes can sometimes be trickier than the more “advanced” piercings, because it is so easy to recognize a discrepancy in angles when you view the lobe from the side.  That said, we love piercing ear lobes here! 

Mateo did this septum piercing last night on a young lady who came ahead of time to arrange an appointment with us.  It went quickly, smoothly, and came out perfect as usual!  Spot on!

Our friend Mark [aka Freshman] previously had his lip pierced by Mateo on one side in this same fashion.  After removing the old piercings, he wanted to have matching scars on the other side as well.  So, Mateo conjured up some magic and did identical piercings on the other side.  He hopes to heal them and then remove them for a similar scarred effect on both sides!

Lastly, Mateo conjured up just a smidge more jedi force to put this incredibly cute and dainty little forward helix piercing on my left ear!    I like it a lot.  It’s so subtle, you can only just barely see it peeking out from behind my hair if you’re paying close attention, but the angle is perfect, and it was as painless as a cartilage piercing could possibly be.

IN OTHER NEWS!

Take note: This Halloween we will be giving $10 discounts to individuals who come in to the shop sporting some sort of Halloween costume!

Put yer heart into it!  Real costumes only…no college students dressed as college students unless we can tell you made an effort!

We are also putting on a small Halloween Body Ritual Event! This will include play piercings and energy/flesh pulls! If you would like to attend, please keep in mind that this is a very intense and intimate experience.  **If you are uncomfortable with visible blood, extreme body ritual, needles, or any related fare, please observe with caution and respect.  Individuals exhibiting disruptive behavior, or negatively affecting ritual participants will be asked to leave.**

If you would like to participate in the ritual, please contact us as soon as possible by telephone or email:

Phone: 831-676-8048

Email: waybodyarts@gmail.com

So, I leave all you dear blog readers with those nice tidbits.  I hope to return soon with more fancy things with which you might entertain yourselves for awhile.  Take care!