Tattoed lady Part 3

Hello there everyone, here we are again, part 3 of my tattoo story.....

My most sincere apologies for the delay in posting part 3, I have had the most awful luck with my laptop recently, but am now the owner of a super duper new one which is bright red and has lots of magical technical wizardry inside, so fingers crossed all my computer problems are over.
Isn't it beautiful :-D


 But I digress, I am suppose to be telling the story of my tats, so here goes..............

 

Number's 5 and 6 

5 is the smallest of my tattoo's and not typical of the ones I get done. As mentioned before it was done in the same sitting as number 4, and again I love it because it is a little reminder of my growing confidence and rebelliousness against my bully husband. It is also dispite its small size one of the most painful tats I have ever had done, right above my right outer ankle, where there is very little flesh. I am glad it wasn't my first, as it would have probably ended up being my last as well.





Number 6 is another small tatt, this time on my left outer leg, a little above my ankle this time (I learnt my lesson well). It is another Indian themed one, a single feather this time. It was done again at East Looe a year after 4&5. Not much else to say about it apart from the fact that I realised that I do not tolerate red ink very well, it took ages for the little red bead to heal up.

Number's 7&8

These make up a matching pair of tatts, done in the same sitting. I have always had a love of all things celtic, I think it goes along with my love of all things historical, and I had always wanted a celtic symbol of some sort. 7&8 were a new experience for me because they were the first tatts I had done that were in a visible area of the body. Until then all my tatts could easily be covered up with clothing, so on meeting me, you would be unaware that I was a tattooed lady. I thought long and hard about having visible tatts. It was at a time when tattoo's were only just becoming popular with female celebrities, and obviously still very much frowned upon by much of the general public. This was only some 6 years ago, it is surprising how much attitudes have changed in the last few years. I was at the time ( and still am) working as a social care worker, and obviously there was a concern about how people would feel about having a tattooed lady looking after their loved ones. However I had built up a good relationship with all the families of those I looked after and knew they would not judge me by my outward appearance. I love my little celtic knots. they are a perfect mirror image of each other, quite dainty even. I was expecting them to be very painful as they are on my inner wrists, but surprisingly not so.

Numbers 9&10

9 and 10 were done in two separate sittings in my last visit to East Looe Tattoo's. after getting the knots on my wrist I felt brave enough  to get a slightly bigger visible tatt. There is no particular reason why I chose the design for 9, I just liked it, a modern twist on a celtic design. I asked for the centre ring to have a little bit of purple shading just to make it a little different. 10 was initially done at East Looe, tho it didn't look initially like it does now. I do not have a pic of the original tatt, but if you look closely at it you will be able to identify the black double heart within the centre of the tattoo. I liked this design, but once home I realised that there needed to be a common theme linking the two outer wrist tattoo's. it was at this time that I first met my current tattooist Phil. He had just opened up shop in town. I went to him with a query about what could be done to make the double heart design more similar in size and style to the modern celtic design on my other wrist. Phil doodled a design that matched the celtic star shaped and shading elements of the other tattoo, and a week later I had it done ( no longer can you get to see Phil with just a weeks notice).





So there you go people, we have covered a fair few tattoo's in part 3. None of the ones in this part are particularly big or significant in any way, but all part of my tatt history, and deserving of being part of my tattoo blog. I hope to cover my last 3 tattoo's in part 4. hope you stick around for that. C ya all soon, Tracey Xx

 

Tattooed Lady part 2

Hello everyone, where did we get up to the other day??

Oh yes, we successfully covered tattoo's number 1, 3 and 12. Well if we move along in history the next tattoo is again actually a series of tatt's done over another long period of time. They make up the collection 2,4 and 13, and today they look like this........

Number 2

Is actually no longer visible on my current tattoo. I got this tattoo about 6 months after my first one, and was done again by Mike Price. At that point in my life I was unknowingly suffering from depression, and this has a great bearing I think on the circumstances of my second tattoo and my subsequent feelings about it. I had in mind at the time to get a Celtic band design ( a girl I worked with at the time asked me if a Celtic band was a style of music..... err.....nope!!). However when I looked at what Mike had available in my price range on the day, I simply could not get anything that I liked. Now today my sensible adult self would say, OK,  you could start on a design that I like and I can have it finished at a later date. However on that day I was badly hung over,  in a very 'I don't give a toss' frame of mind, and ( as I am strive to be completely honest in all my blogs) I had a very sore arm from a session of drunken self harming too. So what I did was randomly pick a design and said "I'll have that". The design I chose was a Phoenix. Now some might say the subject choice was quite me, and I can't disagree, however it was a very brightly coloured tattoo, rather 'old school' and from day 1 I hated it.   This is the only picture I have of it (  along with tattoo number 4 ) and was taken just before the cover up, just so I would have a reminder of what  I was covering.

Number 4

Has a much shorter story. this was done a year after my dream catcher tattoo. Again we were on holiday in Looe, Cornwall, so I took a visit back to East Looe Tattoo's. This design is one I had pictured in my head for several years, although I had always wanted it as a much larger design on my upper leg. I was however at this time in my life far too fat to have a leg tattoo, and so I settled for another arm one. My now Ex hubby did not complain too much about this one to start with, although he did not like me getting it. But he complained very vocally when he realised that I had disobeyed him and had another tattoo done on the same day (number 5, to be covered in part 3). I have always loved this tattoo, it was in a small way a symbol of my growing defiance of my bully husband, and so when I decided to get a cover up, I wanted to save this one.

 

Number 12

Number 12 was started in  Nov 2010 and is to date my biggest and most expensive tattoo. It was done over 8 sittings of between 1 and 1.5 hours each and in total cost me in excess of £450. It was worth it though. Lillie's are my favourite flowers, and my brief to Phil when I went for the cover up was simple. I wanted a lily to cover up the Phoenix. I had an image in my head of a small cover up, but Phil explained that the Phoenix would not be easy to cover, and so a larger piece would be required. I trust Phil's expertise and so let him go ahead with what he had in mind. This tattoo is different to all my others as it is a newer style of tattoo. It does not have outlines drawn in black, but is more similar to a painting and so is far more lifelike. In each initial sitting I had a single lily added to my arm.

 

As you can see I did not have my beloved Indian band covered up, but instead let it lie above the bunch of lilies. Once the four main lilies were complete it took another 4 sittings to put in the dark foliage which covered up the Phoenix and then the finer details such as the half opened lilie's. it is a work of art. My favourite tattoo and one that gets compliments where ever I go.

 

So there is a another three tattoo's covered. I have realised during writing part 2, that although I currently have 11 tattoo's, actually my tattoo history covers 15 tattoo's if I include cover ups and joined tattoo's. I have also realised that the only two tattoo's that I have had done that I did not lke, or that went wrong were done  without much thought during bad periods in my life. But as with my tattoo's everything is repaired and beautiful now. I hope you are enjoying this 'mini series' of blogs, and I look forward to telling you about more of them next time. Until then, C ya, Tracey Xx



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