Do you want fuller looking eyebrows? Francesca Bruni can help you.
After living and working in Toronto for several years, Francesca has returned home to Sault Ste. Marie to provide microblading services for both female and male clients as owner/operator of Blade + Ink.
“Microblading, in short, is basically a semi-permanent tattooing of the eyebrow area with ink for fuller looking eyebrows,” Francesca explained, speaking to SooToday.
“Permanent tattooing of eyebrows goes seven layers deep into the skin, I go three layers deep. The skin eventually pushes up the pigment and it slowly fades away, so that’s the difference with microblading. A client comes back every year or two years to have it redone. It gives people the option to experiment and change if eyebrow trends change,” Francesca said, a full microblading treatment lasting two hours.
An initial microblading session with Francesca, plus a follow up, will cost $500.
“I’m a perfectionist. I do other esthetic services but I specialize in microblading,” she said.
Francesca currently shares a microblading space at home with her father’s wife, a local esthetician.
“I started off in Sault Ste. Marie studying esthetics at Sault College, then I went to Sheridan College in Oakville to study cosmetics there for two years.”
She made her first return to the Sault after Sheridan College, working in various salons, where eyebrows were her specialty.
“It’s something I’ve always loved to do, but I made a career change and moved back to Toronto and studied culinary arts at Humber College. After that I was working in kitchens, at one point working 14 hour days, basically working seven days a week for three months because I was setting up a new restaurant,” she said.
“I was starting to miss the beauty industry because I was getting small burns on my arms from oil splashes, the oven rack...when you’re focused on your job you don’t let anything stop you, but it led me back to the beauty industry.”
“I was working in the day at a spa, the restaurant in the evening, but at the spa I first learned about microblading,” she said.
At that point Francesca realized microblading was an art, one which she wanted to specialize in.
“I thought I could be really good at that because during high school I was into art and photography, the teachers would ask me to do murals. Art has always been a part of me. It’s always carried me through being a makeup artist and even when I was a chef, because preparing a dinner as a chef is an art form in a different medium.”
Francesca told us she spent $5,000 on an intensive two-day microblading course in Toronto in 2017, taught by an award winning PhiAcademy professional microblading artist from Serbia.
Establishing her own microblading business in Toronto that same year, she excelled in her work.
There are different levels of microblade professionals, Francesca’s instructor a ‘master,’ Francesca herself officially classified as a ‘royal artist.’
“I’m very fortunate, because I post photos of my work on Instagram and people find me. It’s been great.”
Eventually, Francesca yearned to return to the Sault again.
“I thought ‘why not?’ It’s my hometown, I come home to visit my family, I have a room available at home where I can work out of.”
“My friends here are starting to have children. It made me want to spend more time here. Not only that, but my commute to work in Toronto was an hour each way. I’ve been playing a lot of golf and tennis and getting to know Sault Ste. Marie over again. I want to put my roots here. I moved back to the Sault in July and I’m really enjoying it,” she said.
Since moving back home this summer, Francesca works Saturday, Sunday and Monday in her parents home and already has 60 local people on a waiting list, desiring to experience the microblade treatment.
She wants to eventually buy her own home in the Sault and build her client base.
For now, she still travels to Toronto once a month.
“I still have two years worth of clients there, so I need to continue to go back there or else some people would be very upset,” she chuckled.
An appointment for a microblading treatment with Francesca can be arranged by calling (416) 997-7724, by messaging her on her Blade + Ink Facebook page, through Instagram or her website