TWIN FALLS --A mother, an operating-room nurse, an animal lover and a cosmetician.

No, this isn't the beginning to a very bad joke.

These are words folks use to describe Teri Reid. She's a lot of things to a lot of people.

But Reid is perhaps best known for what she does in a tiny room tucked in a Twin Falls beauty parlor. From the shop's waiting area down the hall, you can hear only a hushed buzzing drift from Reid's room. And sometimes, though not often, a yelp.

It's a place entered by people looking to change themselves. It's a place exited by people changed forever.

See, Reid really is a mother, an operating-room nurse, an animal lover and a cosmetician. But when she's in her room at the beauty shop, she becomes an artist as well. A tattoo artist.

Reid is one of about a half dozen tattoo gun-wielding Twin Falls folks --beauticians, tattoo artists and medical professionals --who specialize in permanent cosmetics. Reid can ensure you'll never buy mascara or eyeliner again.

In a nutshell, permanent cosmetics, also called micropigmentation, is tattooing where makeup would normally go. The most common procedure is eyeliner application. Eyebrows are popular, too.

But permanent cosmetics aren't purely cosmetic. Reid got into the practice about eight years ago when she was a nurse in a plastic surgeon's office. After procedures such as mastectomies, patients were sent to a Salt Lake City tattoo specialist who masked scar damage and restored surface appearance.

Reid sought a permanent-cosmetics specialist in Utah, and for three months she trained to become one herself. When she opened a shop, however, Reid discovered demand in Magic Valley wasn't post-op related. Most of Reid's clients --people like 73-year-old Wynne Gensey --simply didn't want to apply makeup anymore; they wanted permanently dark-lined eyes and defined eyebrows.

"I can get up now and answer the door and not look like I just got out of bed," Gensey said. "It's so much easier. I don't have to put anything on my eyes, and I don't have to take it off either."

But was it painful?

"Not a bit," she said. Reid uses a topical anesthetic to numb pain.

Gensey, who lives in Twin Falls, went under the gun two years ago after hearing about permanent cosmetics from friends. She paid about $300 for the procedure.

"I was extremely concerned," Gensey remembers. "I didn't want to look like Tammy Bakker."

She doesn't. In fact, if you didn't know her eye makeup was tattooed on, you wouldn't guess it by looking at her.

Same with 66-year-old Kathleen Hayes of Hagerman. But unlike Gensey, Hayes had the procedure out of necessity, not convenience. After a dog bite to the face that required 17 stitches and cost Hayes part of an eyebrow, she asked Reid to restore her beauty.

"Teri helped me look decent," Hayes said with a quiver in her voice. "It's probably the best thing that's ever happened to me. It made me feel better about me."

Reid's practice extends to, believe it or not, horses and dogs. She'll outline an equine's eye to stop matting or touch up a pooch's nose to prevent sunburn. She even tattooed her son's upper arm --after much begging on his part.

Dogs and horses don't have much choice when it comes to color, but people can choose from any hue of tattoo ink. Black, Reid said, is most popular.

Idaho requires no license to tattoo, and permanent cosmetics technicians are not regulated. Reid cautions folks interested in making makeup permanent to research a business before the needle breaks the skin.

"I've seen some pretty bad stuff," she said. "You really have to be an artist to do this."