Graeme

My guess is in Norway. That's where trolls are from, right?

SO AMAZING. Stephanie is one of my favorites.

That's why you gotta rewrap!

Where are you learning to tattoo?

Eagle on the chest always rules, and that is for real one of the best I've ever seen. Really stoked for you!

As long as it's good enough to hold my interest until the second book, I'm happy. I saw that you're working the Montreal convention? I'll say hello.

I just bought the first book of this series because of this, thanks for the recommendation.

Got em. @Pugilist got a Sailor Jerry anchor, I got a tiger hannya from Jeff Zuck flash. Pictures to follow.

Tattoos hurt though!

Congratulations Mark!

He was sharing a booth at the Rochester convention with Mario Desa when @Pugilist got tattooed by him and I'll vouch for Frank William's tattoos looking really good in person too. - - - Updated - - - Another guy I was really impressed with at that convention is Matt Bivetto who is now tattooing at Three Kings in Brooklyn. His stuff is so raw and powerful and he came across as a really nice, good dude. I really want to get tattooed by him, I just need to figure a couple of things out first.

So you have four tattoos, but how many cats do you have? You can't just come on here and claim crazy cat lady status without backing that up. Welcome all the same!

I think this is a flash forward into my future.

The Tattoo Elite International ones are about 4x5 but on 8x10 paper (or something like that) so no matting necessary! Stick them in a frame and you're good. We just got the second set of prints yesterday.. @Pugilist sent them to a friend in NYC because they don't ship internationally and she came up for a visit and brought them along...so now we're only missing one of the Tattoo Elite International prints. Going to get this apartment painted and then have a Horitomo cat wall of our own.

Welcome, who did the tattoo you posted? Awesome that you're getting tattooed by Shinji too!

Hello and welcome. I'm not a tattooer, so take my advice as you will, but given how guarded tattooers are about trade secrets I woułd probably approach this by finding an artist I wanted to get tattooed by first and then approach them about getting tattooed and raise this as a concern and see where that takes you. I also wonder if our resident tattoo removal specialist @Mike Panic has any insights on this.

Awesome that you're seeing John Sultana and I'm sure you'll have a great trip and come home with an amazing tattoo. Saved is a great shop and one of the best things about getting tattooed there is seeing what the other people are doing there because every tattooer in that shop is exceptional.

Welcome, you got any tattoos?

Balls. I have an Xbox360.

That trailer looks super awesome, is this only for PS3? The last game I bought was Skyrim, which I love, but I'm not much of a gamer.

Welcome and what do you have lined up next?

Amazing and congratulations!

Not to minimise what you're going through, but you've only had the tattoo for a couple of weeks so give it some time. When it comes down to it, by getting tattooed you're doing a pretty heavy thing by permanently altering the appearance of your body, your perception of yourself, people's perception of you, you're maybe coming up against taboos...it's a lot to take on, and I don't think you can really prepare yourself for it beforehand. I think it's okay to have complicated feelings towards your tattoos. But really, give it some time, and if you decide that you really can't stand being tattooed, there's a lot of really great stuff here about tattoo removal.

Welcome J, we'd love to see pictures of your tattoos. As for your question, you need to let your tattoos breathe for them to heal. We have a thread about rewrapping tattoos here, and I rewrap mine, but really only for the first 24-36 hours while the tattoo is still fresh to prevent scabs from forming. After that, you need to keep it clean, wear loose clothing, and give it air to let it heal. You should talk to your tattoo artist about this because he or she will have plenty of good suggestions about how to best heal a tattoo.