How to Get the Trendy Freckled Look—Without Tattoos

This trend is questionable—but it was bound to happen. Girls have long been into the sun-kissed-goddess look a dusting of freckles can provide, so why wait for nature's whims? A new craze called "freckling" has seen an increasing number of people getting freckle tattoos. Yep. on their faces.

During freckling, a cosmetic tattooist conducts the process, using colors just darker than the client's skin-tone, smudging the freckles a bit on the edges so they look real. The process can include adding a few new freckles, or darkening some barely there freckles the client already has. What's the cost for your new fresh face? Just $250 bucks.

Gabrielle Rainbow is the tattooist who is rumored to have started this trend. She explained the $250 dots would look very dark at first, fading to the "real" look after a week, and fade entirely after two years. The snap below captures a girl just two days post-tattoo:

While Elite Daily pointed out: "The best part about these bad boys is that unlike makeup freckles, you don’t have to worry about sweating your fake freckles off on a hot summer’s day," we're not so sure it's worth it. Ask yourself: do you really need to go under the needle for something that can be done with a few, inexpensive beauty products?

According to Susie Sobol, a makeup artist whose work appears on the pages of Vogue and Allure, the freckles trend is actually seasonal. It tends to pop up again in the springtime, Susie says, when people want that "fresh" look.

She shared that anytime a model has freckles, designers ask her not to cover them for the photo shoot, and instead to enhance them. Susie added that hot models like Binx Walton, Natalie Westling, Adwoa Aboah and Cintia Dicker are influencing the beauty scene with their with naturally freckled faces.

While we agree freckles do look fresh and fun, tattooing them on seems, well, a little intense. Here's an alternative to a, well, face tattoo:

According to Susie, the easiest way to get temporary freckles is to use a warm brown automatic eyebrow pencil, and place random dots all over the cheeks and nose, alternating how hard you're pressing onto the skin to get the effect of different sizes and gradations of pigment. After you're finished, take your ring finger and press each freckle lightly, mashing the edges of the dots down a little.

For a more unique technique, you can take a toothbrush and get the surface of the bristles wet with a brown liquid liner. Next, Susie says: "comb the brush with your finger, aiming at the face, and splatter the product across your cheeks." Hmm. Maybe we'll leave that technique to the experts.

If you are set on joining in on this freckling trend, we highly suggest first giving yourself fake freckles at home or paying a makeup artist to teach you how. You should see what they will look like for a couple of weeks before taking the face tattoo plunge. Once you do go through the pain of the needle, you're stuck with them for two years.