I got some ear stretching and after care crap today. Show Image
welcome to the cat butt club.
well let me save you some money if you choose to go bigger than whatever you bought.
you need three things:
a base-size plug to start with (assuming you have a big enough stretch)
PTFE tape
emu oil, or at least vitamin e oil
you can use the ptfe tape to wrap around your base and increase the diameter by a few wraps every couple of days. then, when you get past 10-15 wraps, find something else a bit bigger and wrap with ptfe 2-3 times. the tape is nonallergenic and as long as you go slow you won't have any tears big enough to risk infection or blowout. i find corks work well for base plugs and you can get small ones at hardware stores. they look really neat too and once you're at about 3/4 you can start using wine corks -- classy.
the rest of that stuff i'm sure works fine but it's more than you need. most of those sprays and stuff designed for piercings are... fine... but they just help the process go faster. people have been doing this for a long time the "right way" and not tearing their lobes or blowing out. it just takes a ton of patience. for me it took over a year of just 'resting' at 3/4 to get to 7/8ths - i tried 3 times before in the two years preceding and every time my earlobes got way dried out and gnarly. you just gotta take your time :) now, i still have tons of lobe left if i want to go bigger (soon...) unlike my friends who went quick and now have super thin gross earlobes.
of course gross is in the eye of the beholder... some folks here probably think my ears are pretty icky :P
