Now that is one big piece of skin that Brian removed on the top of this Fleur-de-lis scarification. I’m glad that he sent in a close-up of this particular scar, as it gives us a good idea of what a scarification piece should look like when it’s done evenly.
Not because something is dying, but because there was a whole lot of burnt flesh lying around after this branding. Here’s what Brian had to say..
3 hour branding session on my buddy Joe, the toughest person I know. Who else can have full conversations and text message while getting drawn on with electricity without flinching? Having to continually stop to clean ink and blood off the ESU tip was the only thing that slowed me down. Thanks to Lalo Yunda for help with the drawing.
For this next scarification, we head back to Brooklyn, NYC where Brian Decker created this beautiful snail cutting/branding combo for IAM: Polareyez, which was featured back in October.
Here’s how it looks today.
As you can see, it’s much lighter than the scar I posted earlier today. While it’s located on the lower abdomen, and it was cut by Brian, that’s where the similarities stop. Genetics, skin type, aftercare, and many other factors can change how a scar forms on a person.
One of the main reasons I started up the Friday Follow-up posts was to showcase just how varied scars can heal, in addition to showcasing the many talented scarification artists out there. To date there have been over 60 follow-up posts, and I hope to continue the tradition as long as I can. So artists, and those of you with scars, send in your photos to BME (both fresh and healed) so we can keep the Friday Follow-up going for another 60 weeks.
So it just dawned on me that I haven’t posted a Friday Follow-up in a while. To make up for lost time, today is going to be made up entirely of scarification follow-up photos. We’ve got scars from three different artists, and two of the scars are by the same artist, but show just how different scars can heal from person to person.
To kick things off today we’ve got a lower abdomen scar from Brian Decker. What’s interesting to note is just how pronounced the keloiding has made the scar. The reason I’m bringing this up is because the next post today will be another abdomen scar by Brian.
If you look close you can see that Brian used a scalpel for most of it, but then switched to branding to shade it.
As I said, this is only the first of many follow-up posts today. Come on back in a little bit to see the rest of them.
You’ll have to ask Brian Decker what all of the symbols in this Ganesha scar mean.
During last weekend’s Philadelphia Tattoo Convention the hotel rooms were full of all kinds of shenanigans. Meanwhile, down on the convention floor, Brian was working hard on this and many other new scarification pieces.
Some days it’s nice to kick back and relax, just like IAM: eatenplacenta is doing here. This was taken back in November to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of her implants that Brian Decker put in.
Photo by: IAM: Trillance. (Trillance.com)
And this bee has some awfully cool looking knees (and other parts).
I could be mistaken, but I believe Brian did this particular cutting at the Philadelphia Tattoo Convention this past weekend.
Woops! Looks like somebody forgot to hit “post” on the 2011 Year End Awards! At least we didn’t forget to send out the Gift Certificates though! If you’re on the list below, check your email because you were sent anywhere from $20 to $1000. That’s right! We’ve gone from t-shirts to cold hard cash (gift certificates are like cash, right?!) If you see yourself on this page and didn’t see your gift certificate email then drop me a line at [email protected] and I’ll send it to you again!
If you haven’t noticed, the new leader boards are up. They’re linked in the footer on BME.com and we’ve also gone back in time (up to 2001 anyway!) and added leader boards for every year! This is the first year that we’ve also got video contributions so that’s another new thing we’re doing.
If you look at the numbers you’re probably thinking, “woah, wasn’t the top contributor 45k images for 2009?” and you’d be right. We’ve been trying to figure out how to make it as easy as it used to be to submit images and we thought the best way would be to make it so that you could email your submissions like you did since the dawn of BME. Give us a couple more weeks to finish working out the kinks and you’ll be able to email your submissions to the site just like the good ole days! We’re also busy working on integration into other sites so you’ll be able to update all of your social sites from BME and vice versus! You’ll be able to manage everything you want from BME with the bonus that you can keep your BME only entries safe behind IAM’s walls while sending out your other posts! No more having to log in to 20 different sites just to get your FB/twitter/tumblr/linkedin/so many other sites, can’t possible name them all, on!
Once again, I can’t thank you enough for contributing to BME. Check the leader boards to see where you ranked on collecting a cool cash prize! We’re going to start doing monthly gift certificate give aways to the top contributors in the photo and video galleries once the email submission tool is back online and I think we’ll see the submission numbers back to where they used to be. The one bonus is that our Year End Awards got to see some new faces because they didn’t have to upload tens of thousands of photos just to have a shot! While that was fun for one year, lets get back to submitting tens of thousands of photos, videos and stories!
Top 10 Image Contributors
1. 856 images
Joeltron
2. 469 images Naoise-Ryan Israel |
3. 454 images The Sinner Team |
4. 451 images 8bga-kipodd |
5. 399 images 8ckf-olegek97 |
6. 341 images Supa |
7. 292 images Self Sacrifice |
8. 248 images skindependent |
9. 243 images UrbanSoul |
10. 156 images 8phv-l8onha |
Top 10 Video Contributors
| 1. 132 videos 9bdz_kokomi3k |
2. 56 videos 8bfh-udreisoern |
3. 50 videos swen2 |
| 4. 33 videos 9vlm-pdebsk |
5. 26 videos 9bgc-edziu1902 |
6. 25 videos xzotikmodz |
| 7. 24 videos uwe |
8. 22 videos smbite57 |
9. 20 videos jonjuan60 |
9. 20 videos 8ckf-olegek97 |
9. 20 videos wandalaput |
10. 17 videos elevateur |
Top 3 Story Contributors
1. 3 stories KatSaw |
1. 3 stories annalese |
1. 3 stories DollParts7 |
A big SHOUT OUT!!! goes out to the following people for being generally awesome and more specific things they’ve done to help BME keep ticking!
Sean helps out whenever we need him and he’s got a few minutes to spare. Sean being around makes me feel old since he’s been a member of BME since the dawn of time!
Katie was awesome and helped out with BMEshop while I got back into the swing of things after the cross country move from LA to VA. If you got orders in 2011, Katie and her beautiful hair probably graced your goods with her presence! 🙂
Midian has also been around for over a DECADE and he’s continued to throw the SoCal BME BBQ come hell or high water! If you’re looking for a BME BBQ on the West Coast to meet fellow BME members, his BBQ is the place to be!
Nano also touched every single one of your BMEshop orders for most of 2011, that is until he got himself denied entry! That’s what you get for being an international playboy! We love Nano and miss him dearly!
EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS
A huge “thank you” goes out to past and present editorial contributors to BME. Everyone has continued to grow with their own projects and while some former contributors to BME have been swamped with their own projects, it wouldn’t be right not to thank them for everything they’ve done in the past and what they continue to do not only for BME but for the community at large! Without them, BME wouldn’t have grown in the way it has over the past 18 years!
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Warren Hiller |
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John Joyce |
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Lexci Million |
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Sean Philips |
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Lori St. Leone |
Steve Truitt |
Tiff Badhairdo |
Brian Decker |
Stephen DeToma |
BME Staff
BME staff.. What can I say about the people listed below? You know and love (well most of them!) dearly because some of them (Mike and Jen!) have been around BME for almost as long as it’s been online! There is a newcomer in the group and his name is Diego! He’s our new programmer and he’s been fixing bugs, adding new features and generally kicking ass since he hit the ground running!
For those of you who didn’t notice, Mike moved from the snowy horridness of the New England area to sunny Hawaii and we are all so jealous it makes us want to do very bad things to him.. Very bad! We let it slide though because when the servers hit the floor, Mike is the first one there to pick them up and put them back where they belong! Without Mike, BME would have had some serious outages over the years!
If you’ve had any kind of issue with your account, you’ve talked to Jen. She was possibly grumpy and short (she can’t help being 4′ 11″!) but she probably solved your issue and got you back on the site! Jen has been solving member issues since 2004! She took over 10 years ago after I had my daughter and couldn’t keep up with member support while juggling everything else BME and a beautiful baby girl!
I’m not sure that Rob needs any kind of introduction. He sorts through the moderation queue and pulls out submissions to showcase on modblog. He takes your beatings when “nothing new and ground breaking” has been posted because he hasn’t been out on the street inventing body modifications because he’s too busy moderating content and posting links to body modification news around the web. We also like him because of his thick skin!
 Rob ModBlog Beard Guy |
 Diego Sys-Admin Guy |
 CT Tropical Sys-Admin Guy |
 Jen Girl-Friday |
 Rachel HBIC |
I know I’ve been MIA from Modblog and IAM for most of 2011 but that’s because I’ve been busy behind the scenes. Between going back to being a full time Mom, running BMEshop single handed and dealing with non-stop medical issues, I haven’t had the time that I’d like to post online in general. I’m hoping that we’re able to wrap up fixing all of the issues with rebuilding the site from the ground up and that I can move on to building fun features and new applications for BME. I have a TON of stuff launching in the next few months and I’m hoping that lightens the load on all of us here at BME. I know that people often give credit to the staff of BME for it being what it is but it truly is a community effort. BME wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the collective efforts of millions of body modification enthusiasts world wide. Without you, there wouldn’t be BME. I hope to see you on the Year End Awards next year!
