Best face forward At House of Saturn tattoos, the goal is make customers feel at home in their bodies By: Eva Wasney Posted: 4:42 PM CDT Tuesday, Jun. 17, 2025

According to astrologers, a rite of passage occurs when Saturn returns to the same celestial position it occupied on the day you were born. This period coincides with the late 20s and is said to bring on intense bouts of self-reflection, growth and transformation.

For Kiana Delos Santos, the ringed planet offered a fitting metaphor for her new cosmetic tattoo business, House of Saturn.

“It’s really about becoming your true form,” says the permanent makeup artist and casual horoscope follower.

“Something so private and personal can still change someone’s life, because it makes them feel more like themselves.”–Kiana Delos Santos

Delos Santos, 28, and partner Jesse Ojenma, 33, opened House of Saturn last October in a sunny sixth-floor suite at 70 Arthur St. The art-filled studio has huge arched windows — the trim painted lime green — and several stations, where the couple offers long-lasting makeup, areola reconstruction, scar revision and tattoo removal. Two tattoo artists also rent space in the shop.

The duo’s goal is to enhance what’s already there, restore what’s been lost and remove what no longer resonates.

Delos Santos traces her interest in cosmetics to childhood sleepovers with her older cousins, who often treated her as their makeover guinea pig. They also introduced her to the positive power of brow shaping.

“People would not shut up about (my eyebrows) when I got them done,” she says. “It really does change your look completely.”

After watching a YouTube tutorial, Delos Santos learned how to thread her own brows and, as a teen, started offering the service to others. She trained with a local brow artist and launched her own permanent makeup career in 2018.

Permanent makeup, also called micropigmentation, employs a handheld machine, similar to a tattoo gun, to recreate the look of makeup. It’s a practice that’s been around for decades but has experienced a popularity boom in recent years.

While Delos Santos specializes in brows, eyeliner, lip blush and freckles, her scar and areola work is equally meaningful.

With scar restoration, she uses a tattoo pen to bring blood flow to the area and encourage further healing. With areola reconstruction, she creates highly realistic nipple tattoos for clients who’ve undergone breast cancer or gender-affirming top surgery.

“Something so private and personal can still change someone’s life, because it makes them feel more like themselves,” she says, adding permanent makeup can create a similar reaction.

“They’re feeling fresh and they don’t have to think about their appearance, which is something people may struggle with on a day-to-day basis.”

Delos Santos sees many people hoping to fix their pencil-thin “’90s brows,” which never grew back after being plucked to oblivion.

“I wouldn’t have a career if that era didn’t exist,” she says with a laugh.

Since trends are fleeting, subtlety is the name of the game. Delos Santos uses application techniques that allow the makeup to fade over two or three years as the skin naturally regenerates. Sun exposure, skin-care routines and pigmentation can also impact longevity.

“I would rather people come every few years to get things updated than be stuck with something for many years,” she says, adding the industry is slowly moving away from heavy lines and deep application for fashionable and practical reasons.

These days, Delos Santos prefers crafting nano brows — using a thin needle to create individual hair strokes — over microblading, a waning trend in which pigment is dropped into the skin through tiny incisions. If the ink is deposited too deeply, it can get trapped in the oil-producing layer of the skin and become discoloured over time.

“When you see someone with blue or green eyebrows, it’s usually a depth issue,” she says. “That’s actually why we have Jesse doing brow removal now.”

Originally from Brampton, Ont., Ojenma moved to Winnipeg after meeting Delos Santos while she was vacationing in Ontario. The pair have been together for nine years and are now co-workers, with Ojenma handling shop logistics and tattoo removals.

The couple often do consultations together, since pairing both procedures can make natural-looking results more achievable.

Ojenma uses a pico laser, which delivers short pulses to break up tattoo ink.

“When the laser hits the ink, it blows up into tiny particles,” he says. “It could take six to eight weeks to see results, because it goes through your (lymph system) and your body has to flush it out.”

Complete removal can take multiple sessions, which can become slightly more painful as the laser frequency increases.

True to the shop’s namesake, opening House of Saturn has been a transformative experience for Delos Santos, who is Filipina and was diagnosed with ADHD later in life.

“As someone who’s both neurodivergent and a minority, I didn’t always see people like me owning businesses,” she says.

Running her own space has allowed her to explore other forms of artful body modification, such as traditional tattooing and Filipino hand-poking, called batok. She and Ojenma also regularly host community events, such as sound baths, pottery workshops and drop-in art programming.

Find more information about House of Saturn on Instagram (@hos.wpg).

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com