i know i've posted this up on the site before, but since the OP said post STORIES! here's my tattoo, along with it's story!
when i was younger, i used to get a lot of piercings. still have most of them. but the shop i used to go to was a bit of a travel for me, so when i went there the people would get all stoked that i would travel so far. also, you could enter a monthly draw every time you go in to win a free hour of tattooing. well, i was THRILLED one day when i won! it would be my 2nd tattoo, and i already knew exactly what i wanted: MARIO AND YOSHI! so turns out each month's draw had a different featured artist. my artist was going to be Sean Campbell. who is AMAZING, by the way!! and the best part is, he's a total video game nerd/movie guru/music-a-holic! so we had a lot in common. i made the appointment, and came home with this beauty!
i was so very stoked. and since he had done such a good job, i went back about a year later to get the 2nd addition:
the bowser wasn't done at the same shop though. turns out the shop where he was originally working wanted him to work 5 days a week and wouldn't let him cut back at all, which was really unfair because he's also an avid skateboarder. SO he left and was tattooing out of his house for awhile. a friend came with me to get the bowser done, and he talked about how his own shop is opening up soon.
fastforward to a few months later, and i FINALLY go in to see his new shop, and i ask for him. and they say "he left." i was like...what do you MEAN he left? isn't this HIS shop?!" and they said, "well, yes, but he moved to winnipeg and kind of transfered ownership to us!"
so i was just DEVASTATED that my wonderful awesome artist just upped and left! but luckily, my sister had actually moved to winnipeg to go to school, and had suggested i come visit her. just so happens, a week before that i had a WONDERFUL idea for a new tattoo, and i wanted Sean to do it. since he was so conveniently located in winnipeg, i flew there to spend a week in residence at my sisters university (res kids are CRAZY!! more on that later) and get my rib piece started. since it was going to be so big, and i was only going to be there for a week, we decided to do it 2 days, back to back. NOT recommended!!! did i mention i traded him my 17" laptop for this rib piece? lol, a good trade, i think! we didn't think it would get done in these 2 days though, but he was actually flying back to vancouver a couple weeks after me to do some guest tattooing at another shop, which was perfect. we'd just finish it in van.
okay so i'm in winnipeg, i flew there in JANUARY for some STUPID reason! seriously, i don't know what was on my mind when i decided that was a good idea, but i did it, so. my sister and i (who is also scheduled to get her first tattoos done before mine got started) are laying in bed, and i'm pretty tired. she can't sleep, so she decides to stay up a bit longer and go watch some tv in the commonroom. WELL apparently all hell broke loose, because this girl at her Uni had a friend in from Calgary, and long story short, the friend had gotten REALLY drunk. so they put her to bed, and left her in the room, while the other girls decided to GO TO THE BAR and leave this chick passed out in a foreign bed. welllllllllllllllll, they come back from the bar, and the friend is GONE! worst part was, all her shoes, jacket, purse, gloves, everything, were still in the room. so everyone FREAKED out. eventually uni security came, knocked on EVERYONES door of the ENTIRE campus, and woke EVERYONE up to ask if they had seen her/was harboring her in their room. well, nobody had seen her. did i mention i had already went to bed late, and this was now about 3am? then the police and sniffer dogs came for another round of opening everyone's door. still didn't find her. the girl that left her is drunk as hell and crying and freaking out because she's completely convinced that this girl has went out in the -40 degree weather without any outdoor clothes and has passed out in a ditch and died. which, at that point, didn't seem that farfetched. there was pretty much nothing we could do though, and were told to just wait it out.
so after all this, i TRY to go back to bed, but my heart was racing and i had already had numerous giant flashlights shone in my eyes and the door pounded on twice. so needless to say that night i did NOT get any sleep!
in the morning, we had to trek to the other side of the city, early in the morning, to get our tattoos. i was EXHAUSTED. i first watched my sister get her ankles tattooed. then it was my turn. we decided to start with just the outline, and shade in some of the flowers the following day. so i laid down, and endured 3 hours of very intense pain. nothing i couldn't handle, but breathing through a tattoo on your ribs is very draining. i don't think it would have been as bad had i gotten any sleep the night before, though.
eventually, the outline was done:
and we went back to the uni and sat on our asses and ate microwaved bags of rice, lol!
i got a better sleep that night (aside from not being able to lay on my regular sleeping side) and we trekked back to the shop to get me some more poking!
HOLY FRIGGIN CRAP the skin is waaaaaay more tender if you get tattooed 2 days in a row. but i spent another 3 hours laying down that day, and we got one full flower and a bit more color finished. when i first had this tattoo in mind, i KNEW the colors i wanted, but had no idea how he would blend them. so i just told him the colors, and let him go at it. my jaw absolutely DROPPED when i got the first look of my flower!!! seriously DROPPED! i was almost in TEARS i loved it so much!!
sorry for the blurr, my sister was "attempting" to use my DSLR :P
so we left, and tipped him REAL good!
when i went home, i absolutely couldn't WAIT for him to come back to vancouver. well he finally did, and i scheduled an appt! he was going to be tattooing me in him and his buddy's apartment. which went REALLY well. i was well rested and comfortable and relaxed (laying on a squishy bed he'd made for me out of pillows and blankets) and i had chosen to watch "edward scissorhands." which i really think made the tattooing go by quick. did i mention it was my first time seeing edward scissorhands? i know, i know. but, here are the finished flowers:
fast forward to the very last appointment...the SNAKE! i had originally wanted an amel, but decided that as a tattoo that large, the colors might be a bit bright for me. so i decided to go with an anery. did i mention this appointment was done at a new shop that Sean is working in?
this appointment went really quick, only took a bit over an hour to do the snake, it was just really light shading, and it was almost painless.
so, this tattoo was thought up in my mind, drawn up by sean, and tattooed in a total of 4 months, 4 separate sessions, in 3 different locations, for a total of 10.5 hours!! it was SO bittersweet to have it complete! and here it is, my masterpiece (well, Sean's masterpiece):
and that's my story. sorry for writing a novel here guys, i've never actually written my tattoo experience down!
PS - the girl that went missing in Uni, was found in some guys room...obviously. and in the morning acted all "ohmigawd you guys, i don't know what everyone was freaking out about!" UMMM MAYBE THAT WE ALL THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!?!? those 2 girls aren't friends anymore, and don't speak.
THE END
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