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When I tell people I got a tattoo on my lips, they think I’m a badass.

The permanent makeup renaissance that began with the eyebrow microblading boom has migrated to our mouths, and now lip blushing hashtags — which is basically a lip tattoo — are invading our feeds with an endless scroll of perfectly rosebud-y, pink-ified pouts.

In addition to juicing up the shade of your lips, a lip blush tattoo can add more definition to your Cupid’s bow and give the illusion of slightly fuller lips. Some pretty interesting upsides, especially as we age and our lips start to lose their shape and volume. While I had tiny bits of lip filler many moons ago and loved the results, that only lasted for about eight months. Lip blushing can last three to five years, so obviously I had to try it. For science!

Thankfully the harsh permanent makeup of the ’90s and early aughts that left women looking like a deranged Auntie Mame and sometimes faded to an awkward blue hue has morphed into a kinder, gentler form as the techniques, machines and even the ink that’s used have evolved over the past 20 years. While you still can get darker permanent makeup on your lips — often called a “lipstick effect” technique — lip blushing, which gives you a wash of colour akin to your favourite tinted lip balm, looks a lot more natural.

“It’s more modern,” says Veronica Tran, who does lip blushing at the Markham outpost of her Pretty in the City studios. “It’s softer and more diffused, and the colour isn’t as saturated.”

But like any tattoo, lip blushing isn’t risk-free. Because anybody can get “certified” to do lip blushing in as little as two days — there’s no industry standard — you can easily end up with someone whose facilities aren’t up to code or who just doesn’t have a steady hand putting a semi-permanent tattoo on your face. Infection from poorly sanitized tools or premises is the biggest risk, so make sure wherever you’re going has passed a public health inspection (in Toronto, tattoo services are certified by the BodySafe program). You’ll also want to seriously vet the artist you’re booking through word-of-mouth, reading online reviews, and trawling through their websites and Instagram feed to see their work. And if the price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Lip blushing generally costs between $500 and $800 (Tran charges $525 for the initial visit and $60 for a “perfection” touch-up two months later).

A cosmetic tattoo can trigger cold sores, so before your appointment Mama Tran makes all her clients start a course of antiviral meds. She even makes you bring the bottle to prove you’ve been a good girl (I was!). Tran draws the outline of my New Lips in lip liner, which, other than a pointier Cupid’s Bow, isn’t radically different than my usual lip shape. You can’t scribble too far outside the lines of your vermilion border (i.e., where the lips turn into skin) because not only would you look like a toddler who stole her mom’s lipstick, but the colour would also fade unevenly.

After Tran applies topical lidocaine, we talk about colour. I want something as rosy as possible, but Tran advises me to go easy the first time, telling me I can always boost it at my followup appointment.

Now it’s party time!

Lip blushing uses tiny, mechanized needles to layer pigment. Tran does the outline with a single needle but then switches to something that’s (somewhat alarmingly) called the “Magnum,” a larger head with multiple needles in it that she shades back and forth over my lips, to fill in the colour. “Think of it like a dot matrix printer,” she explains.

It doesn’t exactly tickle, but it’s not the worst. It feels like someone is scribbling on my lips for two hours with a particularly scratchy pen. Immediately afterwards, my lips look amazing — super pink and juicy thanks to the swelling — but Tran has already warned me that once the scab falls off in about five days it will take four to six weeks for the colour to “bloom,” and that it will be at least 30 to 50 per cent lighter than this rosebud lip scab of my dreams (a phrase I’d never anticipated writing).

Like any tattoo, a lip blush is basically an open wound, so I have to apply a clear ointment all day long to make sure my lips stay moisturized until the scab falls off. Rule number 1? No picking! If you scrape or pull the scab off, the colour might not take and you risk damaging the skin on your lips.

I wait like an 11-year-old girl hoping for boobs for my colour to “bloom.” (Will it be today? How about today?) After about a month my lips definitely have more definition — like I’m wearing a very light lip liner — but there isn’t a big change in the colour. But then I get my second treatment.

Thanks to various stages of COVID-19 lockdown, I can’t get back in until almost six months later. But when the colour “blooms” this time, it’s definitely noticeable. I wake up looking like I have the chicest little lipstick stain left over from a big night out or like I’ve been eating popsicles in my sleep. I love it.

Now who wants a kiss?

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