If you would like to submit your own piercing experience, please click here.

i stretched the holes in my earlobes to about a 4 or 5 gauge on my own, which took 4 months. i don't know the exact gauge because i never used anything that was actually jewelry, except for the first thing which was an extra 14 gauge barbell i had.
i started on the left ear with the barbell, then a couple days later, snuck into the jewelry studio (i'm not a jewelry student so it's off limits) and cut 2 little pieces of brass rods (totally unprofessional, since my piercer told me later that brass (and the other metal that i didn't even know what kind) is not safe to use in piercings), so i put one in the left ear and put the barbell in the right ear, then upgraded the right ear after a few days.
after that every few days or every week, i increased the size with a combination of several small metal bars, the barbell, and a stud earring.
i have never seen a taper before, but i know how it works, then i found some pieces of latex tubing and realized i could make a taper by cutting diagonally through it to make a long angle. so i did that and went up to probably a 6 or 7 gauge with that.
the next and last size increase i did was with a piece of a straw (typical straw diameter) that i cut in the same way. that was kind of painful because the edges of the straw were sharp. latex tubing is much softer. then i used short pieces of straw as the jewelry (as far as i know, latex and plastic are safe for jewelry unless you're allergic to latex or something). at first i put o-rings on the ends to keep them from falling out, but i hate the way that looks, so i got rid of the o-rings. now the straw pieces fall out once in a while when i'm sleeping, but straws are free so i cut a new piece and put it in with a latex taper, since the hole shrinks a little if there's nothing in it for a while. i have used flourescent green, blue, and clear (for a minimal effect) straws. the clear ones give you the most unique appearance because you don't see the straw itself, just the hole.
i'm not going up any more sizes because right now, my earlobes don't look any bigger than normal, which is how i like them, and i have a free, infinite supply of jewelry.
the found-object-metal-of-unknown-composition method is not recommend and should probably not be done by other people, but the rest of it is safe, plus it's cheap.
Experience Added 03/11/99