Great ideas on this thread. I have all the stuff but I'm taking notes regardless...

Re needle play - you need to be careful with it, I'd really recommend seeing if you can find someone in your area who knows how it works and getting in touch with them so they can show you in person. The number of needles varies, some people only want a few, others can take dozens arranged in intricate patterns.

Needle play isn't something you can casually wander into though, you need sterile needles and a sharps bin for disposal, something to clean the skin with beforehand, gloves to protect against blood-borne diseases (theoretically you could skip these if you have no open wounds on your hands, but I personally would always be paranoid with a client), and swabs/dressings to care for the wound after you're done. Needles don't bleed much when they're in but they do when they're taken out. You can also get different sizes of needles that have different effects - scalpels are more my style so I don't know much about the specifics of needle play, but they're both in the general bloodplay category so all the same hygiene rules apply. I actually wrote a long safety primer on scalpels once that would be easily applied to needles, if you PM me I'll send it over - but I'd still recommend meeting with someone in your area who's been doing it a while and can walk you through the process.