body piercing jewelry

The most important thing to consider about piercing jewelry is that a new body piercing is a sensitive puncture wound.  Low quality metals, espescially nickel, often react with your body chemestry.  A reaction to jewelry can contaminate the wound and cause infection, migration or rejection.

The best metals to use are titanium or surgical steel. Even gold can cause a reaction due to its nickel content so it's best to stick to titanium and surgical steel. Once your piercing is completely healed it may be safe to put gold or silver jewelry into your piercing.

Where can I get quality body jewelry that isn't too expensive? 

BodyCandy has a great reputation for selling high quality jewelry that you can trust.  THey have a huge selection, including many pieces for less than 2 bucks, and will give free shipping to most orders over $25.  You can find a link to their site here.

Some dangers of using low-quality piercing jewelry:

Migration

Sometines the body trys to force cheap jewelry out of the skin.  This is a natural defense to protect the body.  The ball ends of the jewelry make ejecting the piece nearly impossible but this usually results in your jewelry being crooked or slightly out of place.  If you use proper aftercare methods and an inert metal, titanium or surgical steel, the chances of migration are greatly reduced.

Rejection

Rejection is a more severe form of migration. When the body completely forces a piercing out of the body, it is called a “rejection,” because the body has completely rejected the piece of jewelry.  Rejection is often a result of the above mentioned factors coupled with a poor piercing job.  Improper use of needles or a non-body-piercing needle can result in complete rejection.  See the entry here on needles.

next time I'll talk more about how to choose a piercing studio, but in the meantime buy some good jewelry, and don't pierce yourself!