#Ephemeral tattoo review skin

alone.” Ephemeral was developed for them-those who have always been curious about tattoos but haven’t taken the leap for whatever reason. “We did some research and found there are 60 million people like us in the U.S. “None of have any permanent tattoos, but we’ve always been interested in the art form,” says co-founder Sakhai. It turns out, there are a lot of people who would do it. Tattoos are painful no matter how many you get, and getting an Ephemeral tattoo is exactly like getting a traditional one.Ībraham, featured in Ephemeral’s latest campaign, has a made-to-fade stick of TNT on his leg. My biggest question when I first heard about Ephemeral was, why? As someone who is well-versed in tattooing and is covered in permanent ink that will go with me to my grave, I wondered why someone would want to go through the process of getting a tattoo only to have it disappear from their skin. Unlike the temporary tattoos of the past, Ephemeral tattoos look like the real thing and fade consistently over time until one day, about a year later, they’re gone for good. The result is that ability to create actual tattoos with hardly any commitment. “We had to have a product that transfers well, heals well and, in our case, fades well,” says Pierre.

The key was developing this technology into a tattoo ink that not only looked good, but faded consistently and was easy for tattoo artists to use.

They start out large enough for the tattoo to appear on your skin, but over time shrink to a size that the body can naturally remove them. What exactly it’s made of is a closely-guarded secret, according to Pierre, but it involves “biodegradable, medical-grade” materials that naturally break down on their own. This process is long, painful, and can still leave you with scars.

To get rid of it, you need a laser that blasts those ink particles into smaller bits-small enough that your body can naturally flush it out. Traditional tattoos work like this: the tattoo gun injects ink deep into the layers of your skin, below the dermis and its natural exfoliating abilities, where it globs together into particles that are too big for your body’s immune system to remove on its own.

Inspired by an ex-cofounder’s horrible tattoo removal experience, Ephemeral co-founders Josh Sakhai, Brennal Pierre, and Vandan Shah spent more than five years and 60 formulations developing an ink with its own built-in removal process.

#Ephemeral tattoo review skin

Ephemeral tattoos look (and feel) like the real deal, but gradually fade from your skin over a period of 9-15 months until not a trace of the art can be seen on your skin. We’re not talking stickers that you transfer to your skin with water or even henna tattoos. That is, for possibly the first time ever, actual temporary tattoos. What Ephemeral provides are what they call “made to fade” tattoos. But the kind of ink you get there is different. Generational attitudes aside, I wonder whether, if Ephemeral had existed back when I was a kid, she would have felt the same way.Įphemeral’s first tattoo studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn seems at first glance like any other hipster tattoo shop-neon signs, statement wallpaper, hot tattooed people walking around. Flash forward twenty-odd years and around 40 percent of my body is inked (and, for the record, I have a job). Once the ink is mixed, it’s loaded into a tattoo pen.When I was little, my mom told me to never get a tattoo because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to get a job. Ephemeral ink does something similar and goes into your skin and clumps together, but our ink is made of biodegradable components that break down over time, and as break down, your body’s able to remove them.”įor now, Ephemeral only has black ink, but Sakhai says other colors are on the horizon. “Permanent tattoos basically clump together and aggregate and become these larger blocks of ink that are too big for your body to remove,” Sakhai says. Though it penetrates the dermis, or the inner layer of your skin, just like a normal tattoo, the ink has some major differences that make it special. That being said, we took a ton of precautions because for us, that's super important.” “No tattoo ink is approved or regulated by the FDA. “Every single one of the materials in our ink is already FDA approved for use in medical devices, cosmetics, and drugs,” Sakhai says. You can also feel good about what’s going onto your skin. Josh Sakhai, co-founder of Ephemeral, explains that the ink took six years of research and development to make and has gone through many different iterations since.