Live Laugh Loving Life: My Tattoos

Tattoos .. I personally love them!

Well most of them ... there are some very interesting ones out there,

but each to their own aye!

I have 3 tattoos ..

I got my first tattoo on the 17th of March 2006 at the age of 19 at Power House Tattoos. I had the Tribal Star picture on my wall for over a year before I committed and booked the tattoo. This is the only tattoo I partly regret now, I still like the design, but it's not something I would choose for a tattoo now, and would not have chosen the lower back for a tattoo (or "Tramp Stamp" as they get called).

It has majorly faded throughout the years of weight loss & gain :( I would one day like to get this tattoo redone, if not covered up with something that will compliment my shoulder tattoo more & be more of a larger lower back piece.

I originally got my second tattoo on the 17th of February 2010 by a friend of a friend who did tattooing at home .. BIGGEST MISTAKE .. DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT get tattoos done by anyone but a professional!!!

Now I LOVE this tattoo and if it wasn't for this guy (lets call him M for the sake of this post) doing this tattoo, I would never had gotten this design, nor would I have the original sketch here at home. This tattoo was not planned! My partner, Grant was getting his tattoo drawn and done by M and it took about 6 hours total. Throughout all the meetings and dicussions with M, he kept saying "Do not choose a tattoo. Let the tattoo choose you!" which to be completely honest I had no idea what he was going on about until ... I was flicking through M's portfolio of tattoo sketches, and I looked through these portfolios many a times while Grant was getting his tattoo done, and every time I flicked through I kept stopping at this sketch. M noticed that I kept going back to look at this sketch and simply said "You need to get that tattoo" and I suddenly knew what he meant about the tattoo choosing you!! So sure enough a few weeks later I was sitting in M's house getting the tattoo done!!!

Now I absolutely LOVED this tattoo, except once it healed I noticed two tiny patches in the butterfly wings where there was no ink & it bugged me for so long as it meant it wasn't perfect. Hence why I say go to a professional!!

Finally on the 17th of December 2011, I went into Power House Tattoo's and got the butterflies redone, and they looked awesome! The man who did my tattoo at Power House (can't remember his name) made other suggestions to how I could improve my tattoo more. I went away thinking about his suggestions and ended up booking another session back at Power House on the 5th of April 2012 to get the rest of my tattoo improved. The man who redid my butterflies was booked up, so Richard did my tattoo which I was very happy about, as he is a friend's brother.

Richard went over the rest of the tattoo again, making the dots and stars sharper, extended the dots out a bit more so they didn't just stop and added some shading. I now LOVE this tattoo even more!!

Left - Original Tattoo (Crappy Phone Photo)
Right - Completed Tattoo!

I got my third and most meaningful tattoo on the 4th of December 2013 by Richard at Power House Tattoos. Now I always said after my first tattoo that when Kelly (our beloved family Miniature Poodle) passed away I would get a paw print tattoo. At the time I was just meaning some generic paw print design, but with all the circumstances of how and when Kelly passed away I decided to get her actual paw print (done from a print I made of Kelly's paw back in high school) on my inner left wrist! Isn't it just AMAZING! Richard did the entire tattoo by hand, just using a basic outline stencils for the size! It's perfect, I LOVE it so much and it means so much to me!