“JewelEye” A new revolution in body Art expression: “Eye Bling!” - Metalic Embedded Eyeball Implant! The Full Story..

The latest fashion trend to hit the Netherlands is eyeball jewelery. Dutch eye surgeons have implanted tiny pieces of jewelery called "JewelEye" in the mucous membrane of the eyes of six women and one man in cosmetic surgery pioneered by an ophthalmic surgery research and development institute in Rotterdam. The procedure involves inserting a 3.5 mm (0.13 inch) wide piece of specially developed jewelery usually a heart or star-- into the eye's mucous membrane under local anesthetic at a cost of 500 to 1,000 euros (900.00 u.s.).

"In my view it is a little more subtle than (body) piercing. It is a bit of a fun thing and a very personal thing for people," said Gerrit Melles, director of the Netherlands Institute for Innovative Ocular Surgery. (Source)

Shocked? So was EYE!! *>=~]

I read another persons article here , (go there to read a fascinating article on body Piercings) on Hub Pages, about Piercings and was fascinated by the idea that people actually pierce their eyeball!

Actually as you'll see in the video below, its only pierced to insert the piece of metal, its like having a piece of confetti slipped into the eyeball through a slit/tear in the eye then as it heals the confetti stays inside as it heals closed around it. Since its beneath a membrane its transparent and "apparently" on the surface of the eyeball. It is allot like a tattoo in that it, like ink in a tattoo, resides below the surface but shows through it. It's not lol, "stapled on".

It's also not like most piercings "loose" or "dangling around inside the slit" when its inserted and the eye heals the cut it heals around the metal like a mold forms around an object when making a mold, Holding it naturally in place. It in essence becomes a new artificial part of the eye, moving in sync with it. I'm not sure it the layer of membrane below it acts as a protective friction blanket for it so, for example, if you rub your eyes lightly it wont cut anything.

The metal piece itself is designed with incredible smoothness to bypass friction of any kind however due to its shape (stars for example) it has points so I wouldn't think your told you can rub the eyes.. I wonder if the weight of this chunk of metal makes that eyeball stronger, able to shift faster, and strengthening the eyes focus?

What if this was true (not sure if it is) and if you only put one of these babies in a single eye if you will start moving your right eye faster than the left? or what if you had one in each eye and they became incredibly strong (with practice) and could look around like a chameleon does.. Do you think this would improve our ability to use two sides of the brain at once?

Thoughts like this are my way of justifying the very concept of an implant into a perfectly good eye.

Scary or unconventional ideas like this one trigger shocking states of mind and ignite powerful emotions. If you enjoy being shocked this can be a stimulating and rewarding experience, as I myself love the being shocked, however I eventually want the shock to wear off so the imagery doesnt gain control over me, so to humble the concepts I learn as much as I can about it, this defuses the fear factor. This also opens the door to a higher understanding and less ignorant realizations about it. It opens the doors to intrigue and what if.

When I first saw this thing on that other hub it shocked me that people actually did this. So much so I HAD to learn more. The imagery going through my head was staggering to me. Thoughts of pain, needles, questions flooded my senses, does it hurt after? does it feel painful to move your eye? is this painful but people do it for the pain of it? The more I read, the more I understood it the less shocked I felt and more rational I thought it was. Although I'd never get one of these I can certainly understand it, and its not as bad as you'd think really. Its the ideas that are so far out of our imagination's reach without more information that make us think that's totally disgusting, crazy, insane, and what the hell were they thinking. This hub will inform you and hopefully take you to the same place I ended up (that was a shock all its own!), where you won't fear the idea but embrace its coolness.

Some people would just look at the persons eye "Bling" and become uncomfortable because their fears would put them in a bad mind state, ignorant of the true realities of the concept. For example it not only doesn't hurt to get it done, you are awake the whole time, but it doesn't hurt afterward either, and when it heals you can't even feel it there..

Knowledge is power what you don't know can hurt you or at least scare you irrationally!

To me more information makes it less scary to think about, although still I wouldn't want to do it myself. If a kid watches a scary movie and truly believes the bad guy is real, he will be scared of any people who look anything like the character. You can tell him it's not real, he's an actor but until he sees this actor several times in other "not bad guy" roles it won't click. JewelEye is the same way, until your perceptions of fear and ouch are replaced with AHA! Moments of oh I see.. You will cringe when you see just the picture of the finished result, even though it doesn't hurt the person one bit any more than you feel right now watching the screen. Maybe when their eyes get tired it hurts or feels heavy? I don't know..

Admittedly not knowing how it was done surfaced some fantastic fears in my idea of how that would be done, I kept imagining it like a piercing and it stabbing my eye every time my eyeball shifted lol, but now I can look at it without cringing. It's more like a sticker or an "implant" which brings up less imagery too. The shrapnel lol, embedded is specially designed in shape and type of metal etc to avoid potential irritations or fostering bacteria. It's quite fascinating actually.

I found it equally interesting that watching someone do something MORE life threatening like base jumping with a squirrel suit to fly for minutes before hitting the parachute, scraping by mountains with sharp rock formations horizontally and yet I didn't feel the fear, or cringe I was fascinated, yet the idea of planting a chard of metal in my eye had me back in the state I was in when I watched "The Hostel" for the first time, I looked like a nut case to my roommate as I screamed OMG, Holy sh** and moved involuntarily as if I was kickboxing with my own minds apparitions!

Watch the Revealing video below to see the procedure in all its glory. I warn you however it is shocking to watch, but one hell of an education in eye jewelry.

In my search I found several wonderful resources one of the sites here has a downloadable word file you can read that explains everything from how its done to how to take care of it.

When you think of the concept of piercing and adding a chunk of metal to your eyeball thoughts of madness and irritation (to the eyes) come to mind, at least they did for me. Then of course you ask yourself why would anyone take a chance at damaging their eyes for glamour? Other opinions and fears said on pages I visited were that this would damage the whites of the eyes and cause one to go blind after several years. My (irrational and unproven) fear was that this would affect the surface area of the lens making seeing things crystal clearly more difficult.

It turns out that the experts in the industry on eye jewelry have thought this thing through and assure us that there is no danger from it. It doesn't affect the surface area of the lens at all actually, and going blind I don't think is a danger unless of course you get punched in the eye hard enough for this to pop out and damage the lens itself. It's actually a pretty old art form so it's a perfected and evolved procedure at this point. In the article here the author is an avid body art enthusiast and often gets things done just to write about it (and because as she states at the end of this article: "I just thought it was pretty").

She walks you through her journey to getting this eyeball Jewelry implanted or as it's called formally "JewelEye". You'd say that term as you would "ear piercing" or "belly button piercing" and so on. You have to admit if you had the balls to do something like this (I sure have reservations) you would definitely stand out in a crowd, and inspire awe in those who saw it. Its interesting to not that what we fear and won't do ourselves in a million years is inspiring to see another actually doing it! I thought it was cool to see those Halloween contact lenses but this takes the cake!

For fun I put two videos one on the haloween contacts and the second on those (I had never heard of these before but wondered how they did it on charmed the tv series) whole eye lenses for blacking out the eye (impressive look!). As the whole idea of the JewelEye "Implant" is appeal and innovative attention grabbing eye "wear" although JewelEye isnt so much wear as it is embed.

Some people love to test the limits of life. They face danger head on but mind you systematically. The do after all want to survive to tell the story!

I recently saw a man jumping from an airplane with a flying raccoon type suit on traveling horizontally at 120 miles per hour literally "flying" like superman, flips and all, but what truly amazed me was he surfed so close to mountains and the ground (top of mountain plateaus) he was touching the rocks with his fingertips (or at least was within an inch of it) then flew off away and to another area where was practically a foot from the ground. One twig or rock could have ended his ride, but he seemed to know what he was doing. The ride ended with him navigating away from all mountains then hitting a parachute to land safely.

Don't you wish you could have seen that? you can below this next paragraph is the real video of them doing it. the guy taping is right behind the other guy with a helmet cam flying too! Then a camera on the ground/mountain shot them both (thank god for video editing to surpass the limitations of one angle viewing :) The sublime footage that will blow your mind!

To me this took incredible courage but his response was that (well his friend narrated actually) they got bored of just flying so they improvised to make it fun. It's mind boggling that you can get bored of flying 120 miles an hour like superman but when you do anything enough times I guess its no longer scary. Well part of the reason some people are "Piercing" their eyes is boredom with the status quo.

I had to know more to understand my "fears" on it. Fear is the lack of awareness. To me fear is a reason to learn something new and scary on the surface.

When I finished researching this concept I was no longer afraid of thinking about the needle in the eye, the irritation like an eyelash that wont go away (you think contacts are bad was my first impression of this). If you think "needle in the eye" is a disturbing image provoking term, realize that they put scissors in your eye to perform this procedure :) see video for a real shock (the whole procedure is there).

In fact I have a whole new perspective and respect for the idea. No I'd never get it done, don't be ridiculous. Not that I'm against others doing it but personally it's not for me, I don't need that much attention nor do I like to mutilate my body. I do enjoy piercings especially ones like this however. I have an incredibly open mind.

I'd love to meet someone who actually has one, it would fascinate me and make me wonder how incredibly fearless this person has to be. I don't judge people on their decisions if their not my own, in fact I am fascinated to learn why they did it to satisfy my curiosity. I mention this because judgment is the main discussion in this topic upon researching it... Fear is brewing all over the place. Instead of people taking the fascination of it and trying to learn why and how it works or is done, they are ignorantly judging those who do it and the procedure itself.

My apprehension for the JewelEye procedure comes from my reading about the Lasik procedure... I can only imagine that this is nothing compared to the piercing of ones eyeball, but incredibly after reading the articles and results of people actually doing it, its not much more painful. In fact they say its not painful at all, even afterward the worse they say is happening is redness of the eyes and the embedded fear and apprehension caused by irrational fears.

From what I'd read I have to conclude fear is the only real pain in doing it. You can read about the Lasik procedure here which is the full skinny about the procedure and out patient part of it. It takes literally about 2 minutes but the idea of them putting a suction cup on my eye is terrifying, I can't even put contacts in, however I could learn and will for better sight.

Their were two cases of JewelEye piercing (although I don't believe the term JewelEye was coined at the time but I could be wrong) that got major publicity of this gone wrong, however it is claimed that they didn't take care of their eyes and this was before the technique had been improved and honed into what it is today. I read about these cases on a forum but a Google search (quick) didn't return any such articles or publications, so this paragraph is mere heresy I haven't substantiated even the claims or the piercing gone wrong.

Luckily however eyeball piercing is not likely to gain a popular home brewed extension. No one is going to try this at home, any more than you'd subscribe to over the phone surgery you do yourself as the doc walks you through the proceedure. If someone does try it, they need to get their head examined. If you'd like to see some examples of people piercing their nose and lips at home check out this page.

The professionals and doctors performing the procedure seem to be fairly confident this is a very safe and evolved procedure and if done correctly AND the person cleans the eyes properly it is no more dangerous than any other piercing. Something like being punched in the eye in a fight could be highly damaging to the eyes where as normally you can get punched in the eye and recover easily.

I'm going to offer my fellow huber's some topics to expand on. I looked them up (some I found as a spawn of my research on the eye Jewelery) and theirs alot of information on them, but I want to move on to other topics so I'll touch on them here and you can pick up where I left off.

If you think the Eye Peircing is interresting you won't believe what else people are doing to their eyes!!!

There is also an art form developing of tattooing the eyeball! This started out 2000 years ago not as a way to look pretty but to help with diseases that cause someone to go blind. The tattooing was designed to hide the features of the eyes that make it appear bad like red lines and such. Its to give the blind eye a natural appeal, but theirs a market developing (may be out don't know yet) of tattooing the white part of the eyes.. Ouch huh?

I even in my research found someone who created a dangling jewelery piece from a string attached to a contact lens!!! I went to find more but accidentally closed the page and couldn't find it again, not even in my history cache, but you probably can, it had a picture of the "device". Fascinating what people are trying. Some good, some bad, but definitely entertaining.