There is a version of Bren Husher’s story that begins with losing everything she had built and starting over. There is also an earlier version, set years before, where roughly the same thing happened. Put together, they form the biography of someone who, when her practice collapses, finds a way to keep the work going.
Today, Husher runs Painted Lady Pigments from inside Heart and Dagger, a Denver tattoo studio, where she continues the permanent makeup practice she has developed across more than 22 years of work. By her own account, she is a licensed Esthetician and double-certified cosmetic tattoo artist. The business name, Painted Lady Pigments, is the same one she has carried through each setback.
A Career Built in Stages
The first collapse came early. Husher had trained as an Esthetician at a local cosmetology school, found her way into permanent makeup training when a nearby instructor needed eyebrow models, and eventually rented her own room at a waxing salon. The clients were not enough, and the room cost more than it returned. She shut it down and went to bartending. In a 2020 profile published by VoyageDenver, she described the fear that accumulated during that interval as “crippling and immobilizing.” She described it in the past tense because she had already come back.
For the return, she renewed her esthetics license, completed a second permanent makeup certification, and opened a standalone studio that became Painted Lady Pigments. The business grew. She built a service menu, developed a technical specialty, and established the kind of client base that takes years to form. Then, last year, she lost the standalone studio. On her website, she describes what followed as challenges that transformed her into a new person. She moved her practice into Heart and Dagger and kept taking clients.
What She Does
The procedure at the center of the practice is the powder brow, sometimes called the ombre brow. It differs from microblading in one significant way: where microblading uses a multi-blade hand tool to etch hair-like strokes into skin, Husher’s method uses a machine with a single needle. The result, she says, is a soft, pixelated finish that mimics the look of a powder-filled brow, works across all skin types, and holds its color with fewer follow-up appointments than blade-based techniques.
Painted Lady Pigments offers a full range of related services that includes lash enhancement, lip blush, cosmetic freckle tattooing, and corrective work for clients dealing with previous permanent makeup that did not go as planned. For those who need to remove rather than correct, the studio uses Li-FT, a saline-based lightening product, to draw pigment out of the skin over multiple sessions.
Reconstruction Work
Among the more consequential parts of the practice is areola reconstruction tattooing, which uses cosmetic pigmentation to restore the visual appearance of the nipple and areola area following mastectomy or other breast surgery. Husher describes the intention as helping clients feel whole again after surgery or trauma.
That work connects to a collaboration she describes on her website with the Sauler Institute, a multi-location organization focused on medical and cosmetic tattooing, including areola reconstruction. The Sauler Institute is listed as a partner on Sharsheret’s Best Face Forward 2.0 program, a national initiative that provides financial subsidies for non-medical services during and after cancer treatment, among them eyebrow tattooing and areola micropigmentation. Colorado is listed among the program’s active tattooing partner locations. Through the partnership, Husher says she works as a selective artist providing complimentary eyebrow and areola services to middle and low-income breast cancer survivors.
Paint Your Soul
The most recent layer of the Painted Lady Pigments practice is what Husher calls Paint Your Soul, a collection of wellness and spiritual offerings she describes as the project she has been building toward her entire life. Services include tarot readings offered as a framework for personal reflection, Reiki sessions, sound healing, and metaphysical supplies available in the studio. Husher also hosts free weekly soul group meetings she describes as open community space.
“I am delighted to introduce my life’s greatest project, Paint Your Soul at Painted Lady Pigments,” she writes on her website. “Through this journey, I’ve discovered that I’ve been working on this project my entire life, albeit unknowingly.”
For someone who has rebuilt her practice more than once, the statement reads less like a launch announcement and more like an arrival. The work, wherever it is practiced from, does not appear to be stopping.
