Sunday 27 January 2013

Tattooed lady........ part 1

Good morning everyone, It is a fine day today, and I am getting myself a tattoo!

Well to be more precise I have finally got round to booking another session with my lovely tattooist Phil in order to get more of my latest tattoo done. Those who know me, or even those who have seen pictures of me will see that I am a complete tattoo addict. I always have been from a very young age, though  I do not know why.  In many sites on the wonderful Interweb you can find out what particular parts of tattoo's are suppose to symbolise. Personally I have never consciously chose a tattoo because it has a specific meaning, they are just what I have chosen at the time, however each one now represent a little part of my own history, so today I would like to take you on a journey of my tattoo history, so if your sat comfortably......

Tattoo's number 1,3 and 9   


I had decided that the best way to tell you all about my tattoo history is to show a picture and then describe when/where and why I had each tattoo, however I realised this theory falls down before I even finish describing the first tattoo I had done because that tattoo is now Incorporated into a much larger tattoo, so instead of describing a single tattoo, I will begin with the story of 1,3 and 12. Collectively they make up a picture of a unicorn and dream catcher surrounded by a leafy/scroll vine which is situated on my right upper arm.

Tattoo number 1


Is the unicorn part if the tattoo, completed when I was just a wee teen, weeks after my 18th birthday. I loved tatts even back them when it wasn't a fashionable thing to have done. I have always considered myself to be a little different from a lot of people and a bit of a romantic and maybe that is reflected in my choice of a unicorns head. The tatt was done in the home parlour of a bloke called Mike Price in Ruardean. He was a lovely bloke with an awesome Wizard back piece. He was very professional despite working from home and I was very pleased with it. I however had not told my mum that i was getting it done, and still lived at home at the time. Mum wasn't ( and still isn't ) a fan of tatts, but no worries I thought, I can keep it covered, she will never know. fast forward a few months till christmas and my mum bought me a gorgeous top with chiffon sleeves!!!! I knew I was going to get bollocked, so went on the offensive. I sat her down one day and said I had some bad news. I had done something that she wasn't going to like, something that could not be undone and something that would now be with me for the rest of my life. I asked her not to get angry or judge me too harshly. At this point I think mum was already picturing being a nanny, so when I the proceeded to show her my unicorn, she was ' oh for gods sake, s that all', I had got away with it.

Tattoo number 3


Is the dream catcher. This tattoo was done around 10 years after the unicorn. I have always had a love of American Indians and love the  idea behind the dream catcher. At this point in my life I was married and had 2 kids. I had not been in  tattoo parlour for 9 years, ad at the time thought I would never be allowed another tattoo. However we had gone on holiday and i guess the sea air had gone to my ex's head a bit. Our holiday destination was Looe, Cornwall, and on the harbour there is a fantastic little tattoo parlour. The guys that run it look quite frankly scary, heavily tattooed and pierced. However they are the sweetest guys, and I managed to get a booking. http://www.onlinebusinesspages.co.uk/listing/east-looe-tattoo/244192 They rely on holiday work in the summer, so the price was a bit more than i pay at home, but the work was good and again I was pleased. Originally the dream cacher had brightly coloured beads in red, yellow and blue. However a problem with parlours like that is that they rely on flashwork, pre designed pictures that they trace, so there is always the risk of another person having exactly the same tatt. I just put dreamcatcher into google search and found this pic, an almost the exact copy of the my dream catcher, on someone else ( I have an extra feather).

Tattoo number 12


We can do another huge leap forward to tattoo number 9. This one was done in 2011 and is the handy work of two tattooists, though i think calling the first person to work on it anything other than a scratcher ( a tattoo term for an individual who has very little skill in tattooing) would be very wrong.
 I decided back in the summer  of 2011 that I needed a bit more consistency in my tatts as the arm ones were a bit random. I loved both the tatts I had done on my right arm, however the unicorn was almost 20 years old and badly faded. So i designed a vine pattern to act as a boarder for the two tatts. My regular tattooists at the time was very booked up and so I would have had to wait two months to see him. At that time in my life things were beginning to go a bit awry and I was not thinking as logically as I usually do. I wanted a tatt and I wanted it NOW!!!. At the time a new parlour had opened up in town, it had good reviews in the paper and a friend had been there. So i went along to have a look and she could fit me in that day. Guys, if your ever going to get a tattoo, please, please never go to a place that has no waiting list, it is a sign that they are not very good. But I didn't listen to sense and went there. She traced my design and tried to match it to my existing tatts, giving up after 3 tries, she said she could do it all free hand, which I did not worry about as I have had freehand work done before. well, BIG mistake. After half an hour  could see she was doing an almighty balls up, so I stopped her saying it was hurting too much. I paid my money ( as I am a true Brit and unable to complain ) and left. I eventually got an appointment with Phil http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150253199676844.368143.780741843&type=3#!/pages/Hannya-Tattoo/172715366083033 and he did a fab job of repairing her attempt at the vine. This does leave me however with a very different tatt than I pictured. As Phil had to repair her wonky shaky lines and blobby leaves, I have be left with thick base lines. He has done an amazing job adding the scrolls to make it more delicate and it is beautiful. He has also completely relined the unicorn, putting back more detail than was there to begin with and he had also rmoed the colour from the dream catcher to make it match the monochrome unicorn.  As so much in my life, it is not how I planned it but lovely all the same.

I think I had better leave my tattoo story there for today, I never realised that I would take such a long time describing each one. As I said, there is a little or alot of my personal history tied up in each tatt. So the lessons for today, never go to a tattooist who isn't booked weeks in advance, and if you have to tell your parents bad things, make them think your news is gong to be far far worse that what it actually is and you will get away Scott free.
Will continue my tattoo history soon, C ya all for now, Tracey XXX

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Thank you for spending a little of your time reading my post, I would love to hear your comments, see you soon I hope, Tracey xx