Luis has been piercing since 1990, has been an educator in the industry since 2002 and APP member since 1999.
He is currently working at 12oz Studios in Brooklawn, NJ, USA.
He has served on the board of directors for the APP for multiple terms as International Liaison, Vice President, and President.
Luis is known for his exceptional skills with surface piercing and ear projects, and also known for his relaxed and engaging teaching style as an instructor.
As an instructor he has taught for many organizations such as APP, UKAPP, BMXnet, APPE, GEP, Seminarios Cubic Argentina, PPP, APTPI, AUPP and LBPac.
In his personal life, he loves animals, video games, sci-fi, anime, gardening, body positivity and big hairy bear men.
A correct marking can make all the difference during a piercing.
In this class, Luis will cover some simple tips and tricks to consider when marking your clients for piercings.
Facial piercings are so fashionable that Luis decided to talk in depth about them in this class, where Luis will cover the important points of the most common facial piercings that we perform everyday get.
How to do bigger?!
In this class, Luis will address the important aspects to consider when performing large gauge piercings, because working with larger sizes has a different set of considerations compared to smaller sizes.
Cale Belford has been piercing since 2005 and is the owner of Oleander Piercing in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.
She is currently serving as Vice President for the Association of Professional Piercers and volunteers with various APP committees and projects throughout the year.
She especially enjoys engaging with new piercers in the community and helping folks make positive changes in their studios.
Cale has been a speaker at various conferences around the world and is passionate about the community. She travels regularly between America and Europe, offering private studio seminars and doing guestpots.
Additionally, she has been featured in various educational publications and podcasts.
In her free time, she loves to knit and pet cats. Follow Cale or send her a cat picture on Instagram at @miss_cale!
An older class with a 2024 face-lift!
In this class Cale will go over how to take pictures of piercings and jewelry with your phone, improve the look of your portfolio and business pages, and understanding algorithms in 2024 and how they work with and against you.
In this session, Cale will be traversing the world of double, triple, quadruple (and beyond!) piercing placements. There will be a discussion about anatomy, techniques, and other considerations. Cale will also touch base on color theory and how to implement it into jewelry selections and studio!
Brian celebrates over 30 years of sharing his body art expertise with his clients, colleagues and friends.
He specializes in body piercing, safety standards, STATIM autoclaves and HYDRIM automated instrument washers, and is an authorized dealer for the Coltene SciCan family of products.
Brian offers expert consultation and training for streamlined workflow for Body Art Professionals.
As a long-time member of ASTM International and the Association of Professional Piercers (APP), he develops, interprets and publishes evidence based standards for continual improvement in the field of Body Arts.
Brian Skellie makes it easy for you to anodize your titanium and niobium body jewelry with detailed information and rationale, accompanied by live demonstration and step by step instructions.
How can this surface finish process make a difference in your client’s healing results? How can you re-anodize for client jewelry if the color has worn off?
These questions and more answered in this class.
How and why to include anodization into your workflow for a cleaner and less reactive titanium surface finish?
How to offer instant coloration / re-colorization for customers?
All this now with a Scientastic live demonstration!
His name is Jesús Cabanas but we all know him as “Sala”. He began his career as a full-time professional piercer in 2003 in the Canary Islands.
After a few years his curiosity to improve his skills, started to travel around the world to learn from different professionals and pioneers in the industry. After his first trip to the United States in 2007, he wanted to gather more knowledge and his research led him to study nursing and specialized in sanitary techniques, pain therapy and anaesthesia.
In 2012 he moved to Oslo (Norway) and began to work forming a team with Christiane, owner of Pinpoint Piercing, one of the first APP member studios in Europe, where he has continued to improve his technique every day to offer the best for his clients.
In 2015 he became a member of APP, where he continues to attend and lecture in different conferences worldwide in places like USA, Spain, Germany, Poland, Sweden, United Kingdom, Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Mexico and India and in conferences such as APP, LBP, APPE, GEP, PPP, UKAPP, BMXnet, YOUMODIFY, and APA Ritorno alle origini
Also in 2015, a new adventure began as co-founder of APPE (Association of Spanish Professional Piercers) as active vice president, international liaison and organizer of the annual conference in Spain.
This presentation will be an update of the class done this year at the APP Conference in Las Vegas. Many tricks and tips from people from all over the world will be added.
Sala will allow you to discover all those small details that some are doing, that it will blow your mind and will make your life easier in the piercing room.
This is an open piercing workshop – if enough attendees want to get pierced, we will have a lot to talk about, demonstrate, etc. … so get ready for lots of hands-on action!
Important: you must make a pre-booking if you want to have piercings, in order to have the jewelry ready
Bodypiercer since 2005, he has knowledge and experience in various activities related to piercing, such as body suspension and body modifications.
Currently, his focus is on traditional drilling in his studio in the interior of Brazil, serving both his drilling clients and teaching face-to-face workshops.
Having an interest in two professional aspects, piercing and teaching, he decided to unite them, being one of the pioneers in online piercing teaching in his country, bringing projects such as “WOEP” (Workshop Online Studying Piercing) which has hundreds of students from all over the world, including some in Portugal; “Monstro”, the largest online piercing congress in Brazil (and perhaps in the world); and the “Piercing Club”, a teaching platform about piercing with specific themes that are accessible even to non-piercers.
He is one of the creators of the “Colab Piercing Seminar”, a national event that annually brings together piercers from different backgrounds and career points, to learn from leading professionals both in our profession and in parallel professions, such as doctors, biologists, health surveillance, lawyers, nurses.
Also, it focuses on good biosafety and drilling practices. Always looking for innovations and possibilities, without ever abandoning “the basics well done”.
In this way, it supports other piercers to multiply their results through marketing techniques, sales, pricing and customer service.
For a long time in piercing we learned about how to pierce, what needle to use, what jewelry would work for that anatomy. But, we don’t dedicate as much time and energy to a subject as important as: SALES.
If a professional knows how to drill, but doesn’t know how to attract customers, he will end up without anyone to drill.
Parallel to this subject comes the topic of PRICE.
Even if the professional knows how to drill and attract customers, it may happen that the price is wrong and even if he carries out many services he may end up accumulating losses.
This is what happened to me and for this reason I needed to dedicate myself to learning about the topic.
Max went through this since he lives in the interior of Brazil, so he tested it on himself and other colleagues tested it, and started teaching the way he learned and lives.
Selling piercings and piercing jewelry has many peculiarities when compared to other products and services. Far from what is seen in ready-made content from other areas or colleges, it applies and replicates a validated method for piercing.
In this class we will talk about both price and the 3 biggest challenges in piercing sales.
No matter how much we study the topic of Biosafety, there is always little and we need to be constantly updated, since even microorganisms update themselves.
As it is an extremely broad topic, which involves many details of our day-to-day work, it is worth separating it by themes/procedures.
In this class we will address 3 points that are extremely related.
Without properly sterilized material, we cannot guarantee the safety of our procedure.
Without good antisepsis, we can facilitate the entry of microorganisms into the recent perforation, generating contamination and infections.
Without good practices, we cannot guarantee that sterilization is efficient or that it continues until the procedure and location are suitable for piercing and inserting the jewelry.
For “survival” in the piercing market, Max believes that we need 3 things: Knowing Biosafety, Application and Sales. Without one of these pillars we can generate major problems in the long term.
Beth Jenkins have been piercing since 2014, and primarily working with gold since 2019.
Beth is now the owner of Auryn Adornments in Aberdeen in Scotland.
And works closely with Buddha Jewelry as their UK representative, attending conferences and connecting with studios and piercers from all over the world and learning the different needs of each studio.
How to add value to your studio.
In this class Beth will discuss how to build your studios jewellery collection, which pieces to start with and why.
There will be lots of styling and curation tips to create the most impact with cohesive sets of jewellery, while discussing why the verbiage we use with clients is so important.
This class will be an introductory class for those looking to start stocking, and more importantly, start selling gold jewellery, touching on stock taking and POS systems available.
This is the perfect class for you to learn how to know when and how much to reinvest, to give you the best opportunities possible to build you, and your studio.
Susana Vieira is the founder and the current President of APP-PT.
She has graduated in Physical Education for 20 years, has been a Master since 2011, has been a certified trainer since 2008 and a piercer since 2017. In 2019 she was invited by a certified training center to be a trainer in the area of piercing, and since then she has sought to deepen her knowledge to better serve those who seek her for both training and consultancy.
Passionate about teaching and seeing the lack of quality training in Portugal, she decided to start the Cycle of Workshops for Piercers, in November 2022, with the aim of raising awareness among professionals about various topics of extreme importance in the area of piercing. Each monthly workshop, held entirely online, has been attended by hundreds of participants and guests from various corners of the world.
Additionally, she started the Pro Piercers League Portugal creating a league of Professional Piercers that aims to share current information about the body piercing industry.
Susana already has hundreds of workshops and courses in her training, including from APP, as well as presence at several international conferences.
She is the mentor of this event and brings us a lesson on such an important topic as cross-contamination.
Cross-contamination is a process by which bacteria or other microorganisms are unintentionally transferred from one substance or object to another with a harmful effect.
Do you know how you can avoid cross-contamination in your workspace? How should you move around your procedure room, sterilization room, in the studio? How do you keep your customers, your co-workers and yourself safe?
During her class Susana Vieira will talk about all these aspects and much more, so that everyone adopts the best possible practices to avoid putting those who share spaces in a piercing studio at risk.