Fresh new needles #tattoo (Taken with Instagram at Home)
Grapey grapey goodness! (Taken with Instagram at Home)
Well hello my new little friend! It’s so lovely to meet you… (Taken with Instagram at Home)
Why Getting a Tattoo in Summer is a Bad Idea
Getting a Tattoo in Summer is a Bad Idea!
Well actually, it’s not. Got you there, didn’t I? Yes, I’m a bastard.
Plenty of people get their tattoos in summer, and they don’t have any issues, and they look fantastic. There are, however, some things you need to particularly careful of during summer if you’re going to get a new tattoo done. Â And let’s face it, you will, because it’s summer, and you want to show off.
The Sun.
The single greatest enemy of any tattoo in summer is the sun.
The reason is that a tattoo is made up of pigment, and some organic pigments are prone to fading when exposed to UV rays. That means if you’ve got something coloured, and you leave it in the sun, it’ll fade pretty fast. It might be a book, or a t-shirt, or… a tattoo!
So going out uncovered in the hot summer sun with a fresh tattoo is never a good idea. With a healed tattoo, you should remember to wear sunscreen on your ink (not to mention your whole body, but that’s another subject entirely) and if possible cover up when you can. But with a fresh tattoo, the stakes are a bit higher; particularly in that first two-week window when the ink is healing and is very vulnerable to rays. Think of a car window, it kinda protects you, but open it up and BAM! Sunburn time! A fresh tattoo is much the same, it has nothing to protect it as you’ve just pulverised all the skin above it with the tattoo machine. Until that dead skin heals over (about two weeks minimum) you’ve got one very open and scared tattoo.
One last word… don’t, oh please don’t, put sunscreen on it if it’s fresh (OH EM GEE), as the fragrance and other crap that’s in sunscreen will really irritate your new tattoo. Just keep it completely covered while you are outside during summer, and you’ll have a nice tattoo for years to come.
The Beach.
Yikes, this is a fun one!
When I worked as an apprentice, I was living and working on the north coast of NSW, Australia, in a little beachside town that saw a lot of tourists getting tattooed over summer. The beach is a killer for new tattoos, and I can tell you why, it’s the sand and the sea!
The sand is horrendous, especially on foot tattoos. Foot tattoos are already prone to fading easily, suffice to say, when you have a new tattoo and you walk through the sand, you might as well be sitting down with a piece of sandpaper and rubbing your tattoo off. Not a great idea. While your tattoo is healing, all the layers of skin are attached to the vital ‘ink’ layer in the dermis. That means if anything abrades or rubs at the outer, healing skin, it’ll probably pull chunks of the lower healing layer with it. Result? Patchy, discoloured tattoo. Nasty.
The sea is no better, but for different reasons. The two things you need to be aware of is the high salt content in ocean water, and the serious amount of bacteria there as well (come on, things LIVE in there, of course it’s not sterile!).
People tend to assume the old folk tale that sea water is a great ‘cure-all’, however this is not so true. The bacteria, especially during warm summer months can easily cause a nasty infection in your fresh tattoo, causing inflammation and the ink to drop out; and the high salt content can literally burn the fresh wound. That stinging sensation you get from sticking a wound into sea water isn’t a good thing!
The lesson here is stay off the beach for at least two weeks after getting a tattoo, unless you want to risk a nasty infection, or like getting your wounds sandpapered.
Other People.
Ah yes, summer, the time for socialising, wearing skimpy clothes and showing off your new tattoo. After all, that’s why most people get tattoos in summer, isn’t it? You feel great, you want something new to show off your body, and life is full of margaritas and parties.
The thing you need to realise here is with all that exposed flesh going on, new tattoos are idiot magnets. Go anywhere social with a new tattoo, and people will immediately try to put their grubby stankpaws all over it. Smack their hand! Bad people! You should never let anyone touch an open wound-theirs or yours-with a manky hand, and a tattoo is no different. If you’re going to go showing off your ink, and I won’t blame you because I bet it looks really perdy, make sure you educate your friends that it’s not a touchy zone.
So when you inevitably rock up at your local tattoo shop to indulge in some inky goodtimes this summer, just keep these things in mind and your new tattoo will stay looking rad, sexy and not-gross hopefully for a lot longer than just this season.
Remember, kids: sun protection, staying out of the water, and not rolling around in the sand is very boring but very important! Look after your new ink, and have a super rad summer holiday!
The Perceived Worth of a Tattoo
I originally posted this on my old, crappy blog, so bear with me as I was kinda fond of this article and felt it needed to be reposted. It’s been edited a little for increased awesomeness.
Earlier this year, whilst I was still working at Dee Why Tattoo, I was confronted with a very rude individual. This asshat felt the enormous amount of time and painstaking effort I put into his 74-year-old* girlfriend’s tattoo was not worth the money she was paying for it. His embarrassing behaviour got me thinking about the value that people place on tattoos, and led me to write this article.
What is a Tattoo Worth?
This is something I have found confusing and puzzling in the past; I’ve become aware in my time tattooing that there is a rare subset of people that have very specific, unfair and outdated ideas on what a tattoo should cost, regardless of the actual worth of the tattoo. Worth in this case could be defined by how much the appearance or experience of the tattoo matters to someone, regardless of price; these people, I have noticed, aren’t too concerned with much except the monetary cost. Their attitudes got me considering what then is a fair way to price a tattoo, both for the client and the artist, so that both get what they are owed… in other words, how do you actually quantify the cost/worth of a tattoo?
Is the value of a tattoo what it costs in dollars? Or how the tattoo looks when finished? How well it looks in 20 years? How skillfully it’s done, or how quickly? How clean the artist and shop is, how well they treat you during the process? This is all complicated enough, but to further complicate things, with any tattoo you will come up against multiple factors that can influence the above; namely, the skill and speed of the artist, the complexity of the tattoo design (and how much editing it needs), if the design needs to be drawn from scratch, and very importantly the condition of the client’s skin and how well they handle the process. You can see that it then becomes incredibly hard to decide the value of a tattoo from any one of these factors, as all together in any combination can vastly alter the difficulty and time taken to complete the tattoo, and each client has their own ideas on what is most important to them (cost/appearance/experience etc).
Interestingly, I feel the need to also mention that there is also a common view that a larger tattoo should cost more and a smaller one should be cheaper. This might be a throwback to the days past when most tattoo art was of a similar style and detail, and so was probably priced according to size. Conversely, these days and especially with new tattooing technology and the influx of highly skilled artists into the tattoo industry, it’s more often the case that a small and intricate tattoo will be far more difficult than a same-sized but simpler tattoo, or the same design done on a larger scale. Of course a larger tattoo will often take longer; but it is guaranteed that a small but intricate tattoo is far more difficult and time consuming to do, and do well than a small, simple tattoo; so these days you really can’t fairly charge a tattoo by size.
So in deciding the cost, or worth of a tattoo, most shops consider the best and fairest way is to charge by the hour. Due to all the factors I listed above, time seems to be the most accurate way we have of quantifying the difficulty of a tattoo. If you start trying to charge by size, or any of the other factors alone, you run up against a whole host of problems; not only is it unfair to the tattoo artist, who puts in the effort, it can end up being quite bad for the customer too… as one of the guys I work with pointed out, you end up with shops that charge whatever they like, and then pump out fast awful tattoos for crazy prices, just so they can make more money.
If you’re one of those people who have old-fashioned ideas on what a tattoo should cost, before deciding what you think the tattoo should cost, consider what it is actually worth, to you- because a good tattoo, and I cannot stress this enough- a good tattoo, one worth having on your body for the absolute rest of your life, will take a lot of effort, whether that is in skill, or time, or concentration. If a tattoo is worth this to you, pick an artist who understands and appreciates this, and if not, then please don’t be a twat; don’t tell off a genuinely good, kind and caring artist. Save us all some time and go to shop that turns out cheap, fast tattoos.
Or better yet, get your buddies to do it for you in their garage for free… I guarantee you’ll get exactly what you pay for.
* Yes, you read that right-and due to her age she had very hard skin to tattoo, and to make it even more fun, the design she picked was one of the hardest I’ve ever done. Luckeeee!
I wasn’t actually too concerned over the boyfriend’s childish hissy fit. But the epic thought-train it sent me on (that subsequently led to this article being written) totally made up for his asshattery.
