I crave pain, colorful tattooed pain

With warmer weather comes less clothing. Less clothing results in more bared skin. And for me, bared skin means the urge to cover it up… with colorful tattoos.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been super pale. I mean PALE. Ghost-like. I’d like to blame it on my Welsh heritage, but really, I’m just not a big fan of the sun. I can’t remember a time when I’ve actually had an actual tan. It’s either brutal, lobster-like sunburns, or nothing. Thanks, sun.

Every time spring rolls around, and I revert back to my sleeveless dresses, I yearn to cover my pasty white arms with colorful tattoo-y goodness. If it wasn’t for my pathetic inability to make decisions and stick to them without changing my mind 38938 times, I’d surely have full sleeves at this point. But alas, I suck at bringing my ideas from conception, to paper, to skin. I constantly come up with what I think are awesome concepts for a new piece, but my lack of drawing skills & inability to clearly explain my vision just leads me to scrap the ideas altogether. So. Frustrating.

I haven’t thought too much about new ink lately, but only because I’m pregnant & getting a tattoo isn’t the most responsible thing I can do for my lil’ rosebuds. However, I’m sure once they’re here, I’ll be anxious to get more work done. Possibly some kind of tribute to them? We’ll see.

So here are my current tattoos. There’s definitely things I would like to change about them now, in hindsight, but such is life.

This was my first tattoo. The word “vegan” done in green ink. I think I got it in 2007. Done with vegan-friendly ink, by a friendly vegan artist.

I used the logo from The Vegan Society, but tweaked it to leave out the flower part.

Next, I got a small branch with 2 blue birds on my right wrist. Soon after, I added more branches & more birds. I sketched the basic design & my artist drew it up & made it permanent. There are definitely parts about it that I wish I had done differently, but overall, I’m still happy with it. My biggest concern is that it looks “upside-down” to everyone but me (which I didn’t really consider at the time). Also, the design doesn’t leave much room for adding on to, even though there’s a lot of empty space. Ehhh..

Once my right arm was done, I felt that my left arm looked too bare, soooo… I added to that as well. More birds, more branches, more petals, a birdcage… I also decided to kind of link both arms together, by adding an opened lock on the left arm, and a bird flying away with a key on the right. As the birds fly up over the word “vegan”, it depicts how animals should live – unconfined and free.

I’ve actually seen quite a few photos of other people on the web who have ripped off this tattoo. It’s kind of frustrating, but I guess that’s to be expected when you post your ideas online. The same thing has happened to my husband. Seems there are a lot of people out there who lack creativity. Tisk, tisk.

I have one more tattoo to share, but I’ll save that for a future post.

Happy Spring tattoo-ing!!