Stretching

Stretching is a process of making your piercing hole wider so you can wear bigger jewelry. This is something that it’s possible to do on your own, but you need to be very careful. Stretching your piercing to a larger size (gauge) means that you need to wear larger gauge jewelry pieces such as ear plugs, flesh tunnels, earlets, spirals and claws. Not all piercings can be successfully stretched, though. Some are easier to stretch than the others and provide better results. For example, stretched lobes are the most popular among all stretched piercings. Other popular piercings to stretch include septum piercing, nipple piercing and various types of genital piercings.

Stretching is a process that you need to do carefully. Some people go with dead stretching, which involves simply using jewelry that is larger than their current piercing hole. While this may seem like a good idea, it often leads to injuries and other problems. This is why gradual stretching methods are a much better idea. Out of all, stretching with tapers is the most popular choice. It involves inserting a special tool, called a taper, which starts in diameter (gauge) of your current piercing hole and tapers to the next larger size. After going through your piercing with the taper you can insert the jewelry of the next gauge. It is very important to wait for your body to recover and your newly stretched piercing to fully heal before you attempt to stretch further. Also, never try to jump two or more sizes: you need to stretch to the next bigger gauge to prevent injuries.