|
 SofTap®
permanent cosmetics is the easiest and gentlest
way to implant permanent color into the skin.
The SofTap®
needle configurations are designed to provide
maximum comfort, fast healing, complete control,
little or no touchups, and most important
of all, the most natural look in the world.
The
SofTap® hand method
provides you with a lot of versatility so
that your end results will be completely soft
and natural looking. Many of the procedures
that can be done with the SofTap®
hand method are as follows: You can design
individual hair strokes in the eyebrows, fill
in brows lightly, fill them in solidly, do
thin, fine lines for eyeliner and lash enhancement,
smudgy effect for eyeliner, combination smudgy
liner and lash enhancement, thick upper and
lower eyeliner, full lip color, lip liner,
lip extension, any of these combinations for
lips, scar camouflage, beauty mark, or nipple
areola reconstruction.
How
does the SofTap®
method work?
It is very simple. The SofTap®
needle configurations come in groups of 3's,
5's, 7's, 9's, 12's, 28's, 42's, 56's, 84's,
and 114's. The signature trademark of the
SofTap® TM technique is the 12, 28, 42, and
56 needle assemblies. All of your permanent
cosmetic procedures can be done with the 12
prong needle assembly. Through years of testing,
we have found that the 12 prong needle is
the right length to create a natural length
hair in the brow area, the right length to
go around the curves of the bow in the lips,
and a great length for doing eyeliner and
lash enhancement. The needle configurations
are tightly set next to each other flat at
an angle like this .The needles are gently
placed on the skin, scooted slightly forward,
and then gently rolled and lifted from the
front needle to back needle off of the skin
to deposit color.
Examples
of Needle Size Uses
Needle
configurations for eyes:
Thin line, 5,7,9,12
Medium liner, 28
Medium -thick line, 42 (good for uppers)
Thick liner, 56
Soft
smudgy thin line, 3 round
Soft smudgy medium line, 8 round
Soft smudgy thick line, 15 round
Needle
configurations for brows
12
prong needle for medium brows
7 or 9 prong if thinner eyebrows
8 or 15 round for soft fill in
Needle
configurations for lips
Lip
Liner:
10 point, fine line
24 point, fine/med line
18 round, med line.
Fillers
84 horizontal slant, small lips
114 horizontal slant, med/large lips
Use needles only once
Never reuse needles. It is against U.S. Federal
law to re-use needles. Show the client that
you are throwing them away in a sharps container.
This is your best defense against anyone trying
to accuse you of reusing needles. Some technicians
like to save their needles and reuse them
on the same client. This is not acceptable.
You are leaving yourself open for litigation
if you do so. You never want anyone to be
able to point a finger at you and say that
you gave them some disease.
Also
when moving from brows or liner to lips, change
your needle. You do not want to be accused
of a brown color from the brows being implanted
into the lip when the cause of the brownish
tone was hyperpigmentation. Do not leave yourself
open to this. At the same token, do not use
the same needle that you used on the lips
for the brows and eyes for the same reason,
but more importantly that you do not want
to transfer the herpes virus into the eye
area from the lip.
Complete Control
Because this is a machineless method, there
is no loud noise, and no worries about putting
color in the wrong places because you will
have complete control with the SofTap®
hand method. Color will not be deposited into
the skin until you gently roll and lift the
needle assembly off of the skin. If you set
your needle assembly onto the skin and decide
that that's not exactly where you want the
color to go down, then no problem! Just take
away the needle assembly from the skin and
no color will be deposited. Furthermore, you
can have exact precision in all of your work
with SofTap®. The
two procedures where precision is an absolute
must are the eyeliner and the lips. SofTap®
allows for ease of exact placement of pigment.
Eyeliner can be done as thin as this line
with the SofTap®
method. Because of such precision and control,
you can target the most discriminating clients.
Maximum
Comfort
The first question that your client's friends
and family ask them is "Did it hurt?"
The most common answers are "It wasn't
bad at all", "I fell asleep",
"Tweezing hurts more", I'm going
back to get everything else done". SofTap®
provides the maximum amount of comfort for
all of your procedures. It is so gentle. You
have to feel it to believe it.
Fast Healing Time
Because SofTap®
is so gentle, little or no topical is required
for your procedures. Brow procedures can be
done without any topical at all. This is great
because the less topical you have to use,
the faster the skin will heal. What topical
does is block the message to the brain that
there is pain. Therefore, since the brain
is not receiving that message , it does not
send out its armies to begin healing the area
until after the topical has worn off. With
SofTap® , you can
control any discomfort with the speed at which
you are rolling and lifting off of the skin.
If your most sensitive client becomes slightly
uncomfortable, you can quickly put her at
ease by slowing down your lift off. In addition,
to expedite the healing process, we strictly
use the SofTap®
post treatment ointment. It is fabulous! It
immediately traps the color into the skin
and begins the healing process immediately.
Little
or no touchups
If you are doing the SofTap®
technique correctly, you will have little
or no touchups. One of the biggest problems
that the permanent cosmetic professional faces
is having to do so many touchups. The reason
why there are so little touchups to do with
SofTap® is because
for the eyeliner and brow procedures, there
is little or no blood. What does this mean?
This means that the blood supply is in both
the papillary and reticular layers of the
dermis. SofTap®
is gentle enough so that you do not have to
draw blood. The SofTap® TM method places pigment
at the surface of the dermal layer. This makes
the procedure permanent. The gravity of the
color particles then brings it lower into
the dermis without unnecessarily traumatizing
the reticular and papillary layers of the
dermis. Too much blood will help to wash away
any color and if blood comes to the surface,
so will the macrophages of the immune system
which help to engulf any foreign matter that
enters the skin.
The Most Natural Looks
The SofTap® hand
method provides you with a lot of versatility
so that your end results will be completely
natural looking. You can design individual
hair strokes in the eyebrows and thin fine
lines for eyeliner and lash enhancement. Make
sure that when you are setting your needles
down that all of the needles are touching
the skin. As you roll the needles off of the
skin, the skin should fall off of the needles
like dominos. Practice this slowly so that
you can see this effect.
The
Technique
1.
Gently place your needle assembly on the skin
in the place where pigment is desired. Make
sure that when you are setting your needles
down that all of the needles are touching
the skin.
2. Do not depress the skin with the
needles. This is a frequent cause of unnecessary
pain for your client.
3.
Scoot the needles slightly forward till you
feel them catch into the skin.
4. Gently lift the front needle through
back needle off of the skin thereby depositing
color into the skin where the needles originally
made contact (see # 1 under technique).
As the needles come off of the skin, the skin
should fall off of the needles in sequence
(like dominos). Practice this slowly so that
you can see this effect.
5.
You can achieve a shorter line such as the
3 or 5 prong needle by using a larger needle
assembly and use only the first few needles
or back few needles of the larger needle assembly
(such as the 12 prong needle assembly). The
12 prong needle is the most popular choice
of most professionals for all of the procedures
because you can work faster than with the
smaller needle assemblies. Sometimes, however,
you will want a shorter line than the 12 prong
needle. The places where a shorter line may
be desired is in the inner portion of the
brow and the bow of the lip.
6. If you have one tiny little spot
that you need to implant color into or you
want to do a beauty mark without having to
use an addition 3 prong needle, then you simply
flip the needles upside-down and pick the
spot on the skin with the first needle.
All Rights Reserved. Copyright 1996 by SofTap®
Rules
To Work By
1.
Silence is not golden. Because this is a non-machine
method, there is no loud or buzzing noise.
The hand method is extremely quiet except
for one small sound. This sound can be described
as a Velcro sound that is emitted as the needles
come off of the skin with each tap. You must
hear this sound or else you are not going
deep enough. If you do not hear this sound,
your pigment will not stay.
2. Stretch that skin. The skin should
be pulled tight as a drum when the needles
are tapping into the skin. The skin must not
move at all when the needles are lifting off
of the skin, If the skin is loose, there will
be less resistance against the needles which
can cause unnecessary pain .
3. Tap quickly and gently. Quicker
tapping is much gentler than slower tapping.
Tap very fast when filling in areas, but do
slow down where extreme precision is required.
How fast is fast enough? About 3-5 taps in
one second.
4. Don't travel around when trying
to achieve a solid look. Traveling around
means that you are not tapping in the same
exact spot . You need to tap in the same spot
in order to achieve a solid look such as thin
solid lines for the individual lines for the
hair simulation on brows, eyeliner, lipliner,
and filling in the lips. These areas require
tapping in the same spot. If you hear the
Velcro sound, but your color didn't stay.
This means that you did not tap enough times
in one spot
5. How many times to tap. This is going
to vary from skin type to skin type. Some
skin types will accept pigment with only 3
taps in the same spot while other skin types
may require much more tapping in the same
spot. With practice, your movements will be
swift enough that you will be tapping 3-5
taps in one second. With that speed you will
sweep through each eyebrow in 10 minutes with
a range of 3-12 taps in one spot. Try and
remind yourself to stay in one spot longer
before moving to a new area. This is the opposite
of machine work where the user is told not
to stay in one spot. This is very important
to keep in mind especially when doing lips.
When filling in the lips with a 28 or a 56
prong needle assembly, you must tap at a pace
of 5 taps per second and stay in one spot
for about 30-45 seconds before moving to a
new area. Do not count how many times you
tap, but instead pace yourself by staying
in one spot for a certain length of time.
By doing this, you will be able to do lips
only once or with only one touchup. Make sure
that there are absolutely no holidays (no
spots of skin showing through) because this
will be even more exaggerated when it is healed.
6. Do travel around for a smudgier,
softer look. Do tap your needles around randomly
when trying to achieve a soft, smudgy look.
Do this for filling in between hair simulation
on brows, smudgy eyeliner, and texturizing
or blending of a lipliner into the lip.
7. Control the darkness of your color
by how many times you tap. You will be controlling
the darkness of a color by how many times
you are tapping into the skin at the same
spot. For example, you can have two sets of
brows done with the same color and one set
is darker than the other. How can this be?
One set was tapped in at 5-6 times in one
spot whereas the other set of brows, the color
was implanted at 2-3 taps in the same spot.
With this in mind, you can create the most
natural looking brows by tapping in the least
amount of times at the nasal zone or inner
tear duct area (this will make this the lightest),
the most amount of tapping in the central
zone or arch area (this will make this the
darkest part of the brow), and the second
most tapping in the same spot in the Temporal
Zone or outer eye portion (this will be the
second darkest area). For example, for a completely
natural look with a medium toned color, you
may tap 1-2 times in the same spot in the
nasal area, 3-4 times in same spot in the
central arch area, and 2-3 taps in the same
spot in the Temporal Zone. If after healing,
your client wishes it darker, then just tap
in the same color more times in the same spot.
You will find that you will have to do much
less touchups if your clients leave your office
feeling that they are a little too dark. That
way when they heal, the color intensity should
be just right. For a solid eyeliner, there
should be no holidays. If there are holidays
present, they will become more obvious after
complete healing. This is probably the most
important aspect to keep in mind. I always
find myself telling my students that they
need to implant more color in the same spot
for the eyeliner procedures. Your eyes must
scrutinized the skin like a hawk and look
for any spot of skin showing through. So just
to be on the safe side, when you think that
you are done with your eyeliner, go over it
again a couple of times more. Of course for
a smudgy appearance around the eyes, you would
want to have some holidays showing. This would
create a softer appearance. You will want
to tap into the skin randomly for this. For
the most part, however, you will be filling
in your eyeliner lines solidly. Also make
sure that you wipe thoroughly with your moistened
q-tips in order to get off any leftover pigment
on the skin because if you do not wipe the
area well enough, you will think that the
color is implanted into the skin when it just
hasn't been wiped off well enough.
Good
luck to you and have fun. Your clients will
love what you do for them. If you have any
questions, please call your instructor. Alexis
Lawson - founder of SofTap®
Permanent Cosmetics.
All Rights Reserved. Copyright
1996 by SofTap®
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