sbhikes

I'm getting my 20-year-old ankle bracelet of small flowers covered on Monday night! Bigger flowers.

Never heard of a full sock. I am so excited. I just made an appointment for Monday night to cover my 20-year old ankle bracelet tattoo. You should have seen the artist's eyes light up when I told him the style I liked and I mentioned Valerie Vargas and Virginia Elwood and people like that. He suddenly went from thinking who knows what about me to hey, wow, this lady knows something about tattoos. He totally thinks I can have a nice tattoo. My boyfriend is away and unreachable so I had nobody to share my excitement with. He'll know nothing until it's already all done.

Maybe so but there was a whole thread on this somewhere. Posted in the thread is the pair of legs with a bunch of clearly separated and visible tattoos, with a sun and moon on each knee. I like that look more than traditional Japanese or traditional American where there's a lot of background connecting everything.

Lots of places actually. My two shoulders, the center of my back, my lower back, possibly my hip bones--even though that's toward the front it's not in a fatty or a visible place, my calves, and the tops of my feet. When I am older I may put some on my forearms. I'm likely to start moving toward the sides and fronts of my lower legs since I already have some on one leg. That is if I decide to get a lot more tattoos. I do not want one big giant tattoo on my back. I would rather have one on each shoulder, a big one like a lady head in the middle and either a "tramp stamp" or multiple tattoos on my lower back. It's possible there would still be room for a couple below the ones on each shoulder next to my lady head. I like the look of a lot of smaller tattoos rather than things like "sleeves" where it's all one big tattoo that you can't really make out the individual items.

In addition to the usual places (hands, face, etc) I don't think I would get a tattoo on any part of my body that is prone to excessive body fat or cellulite (upper arms, thighs, buttocks). I also won't get any on my chest or breasts. Actually, I feel like I wouldn't want any on the front side of my body. I'm more comfortable having them on the back. However, one day I would like one on my forearm blow the crease of my elbow. I guess I'm kind of wimpy when it comes to tattoos even though I like them.

But you can get an arm bracelet like that. I was considering putting a snake around my ankle with some roses as an ankle bracelet. As a cover up for a bracelet of flowers that I have never liked.

Why is it that you never see snakes coiling all the way around a limb?

My first one was bad because I brought in a drawing I made as an idea and asked for it to be made into a real tattoo but instead the artist just did the exact drawing. I gave it 22 years to fade to a blob and covered it with a portrait of my bird. My second one was bad because it was a thin vine with small flowers on my large ankle. I asked for more flowers to be added and ended up with the light pink ones dangling at weird angles. I hid my ankle under socks for a year. Then I went to another shop and asked for help. I got more flowers and thought it was okay but I really do not like it anymore. It's been 20 years or so. Fixing it is my next project but I'm afraid it'll only get worse so I keep changing my mind.

I got a large one on my calf a couple years ago and at first I kept thinking "Oh my, what have I done to myself?" Then I got a little more used to it. Now I have had so much fun owning it and "using" it that I honestly feel it has improved the quality of my life. (By "using" I mean that it is a map that makes people instantly understand when I tell my story.)

I am in a relationship with someone who has no tattoos. I only have 3 tattoos though. I'm 48 years old and he is 62. I think it would seem odd to me if he got a tattoo. It doesn't quite suit his personality. I consider myself more of a free spirit so it makes more sense to me to have tattoos. In any case, I don't think either of us needs to consult the other about it. When I got my first tattoo I was about 27 or so. The tattooist said they were addicting and that I would get more. I did go get one more but it was such a horrible experience that I didn't get another one for decades. They guy totally botched the job and I actually hid my leg in shame for a year until I got it fixed. I still don't really like the tattoo very much but at least it's not totally embarrassing. Recently I got a larger tattoo that is pretty good and it is so different to have a large, good tattoo. Now I understand why they are addicting. But I still don't seem myself as a "tattooed person". I feel out of place in tattoo shops. I'm not cool. I'm just an ordinary middle-class square type person. Boring. Maybe I'll change that when I'm old.

I will definitely bring my ideas to him then and hope for the best. I'm all scratched up from hiking last weekend so hopefully I'll be healed up in a couple weeks and be able to make an appointment while my boyfriend is gone (so I can avoid any peanut-gallery commentary from the untattooed man about the house.)

Oh good, I didn't get banned for posting my images. Do you think I could use flowers like any of these, the complicated ones and the simple ones? Or am I stuck with just roses? I plan to somehow print a bunch of pictures of things I like and bring them with me, so I'm sure it would work out. I'm only a little bit fussy. I want it to be pretty and I want to be done being disappointed with my tattoo. It's been nearly 20 years. And I don't want my mom to have a total heart-attack if it comes out large. I'm almost 50 and still care about my mom, ha ha. If the tattoo wasn't there I would probably get birds. I sometimes think that if I could start over and if I actually wanted to be heavily tattooed I would just get all birds, flowers and butterflies, all different kinds. Songbirds, parrots, birds doing unusual things, birds with other objects, girlheads and birds, whatever.

I have to admit I have been thinking equally about what I want and about what might actually work. What I think I want: bigger flowers, not all these little ones. I really like texture, patterns and brightness so if there is some way to work that in. I wish I could have mandala flowers or flowers that are almost like mandalas but not quite. What might work is adding a snake winding around the flowers to help fill up the spaces. Maybe if the snake is black and white and highly patterned in some way and the flowers are in color with really textured leaves. Roses or big 5-petaled flowers with interesting middles. The other day I saw an interesting tattoo of a mask and it made me think maybe my tattoo doesn't even have to be anything at all. Maybe it could be patterns of color. So I'm sort of open to suggestion. For sure no 8-balls or panther heads! I just don't know if I can color over this mess with something new or if it is still too dark or if it just covers way too much in a way you wouldn't be able to be very creative in a coverup. I'm not sure if I will be banned if I link to pictures of my tattoo, but I will try:

The first guy who said no problem he could cover it the more I looked at his work, the worse I realized it was. The next shop they really wanted to just re-work it because they thought wow, old-school tattoo, how cool is that? Well, okay, I can appreciate the sentiment but this tattoo had been re-worked three times when it was new and now that it's a bit faded and 20 years old I think I finally have a chance to get rid of it. But they were a good shop so I let them cover a much smaller old tattoo. The third guy I went to, his portfolio blew me away. He's every bit as good as some of the stuff you see on blogs like Our Endless Days. I'm surprised he's such a well-kept secret. He thought he could cover it but he also gave me the "you are crazy" look, maybe because I'm just some middle-class, middle-aged old lady who isn't cool at all. Or maybe because it didn't seem like I had much of an idea of what I would like and what would work. He did say to take his card and call, though. So I wanted to go in armed with a decent idea. Such an ugly, awkward tattoo but covering it also scares me a little.

Hi there, I've been lurking for a while. I joined to ask a question about cover-ups, maybe get some suggestions. I've gone around town and found a really good artist that I would like to do the work, but I've asked just about every artist in town and some say yeah, easy to cover, some say better to just go over it and keep it as-is, and all of them kinda give me this look like maybe they think I'm crazy. So I thought I would seek opinions and ideas here. I think I might have a good idea for it. The tattoo is an ankle band so that is problem number 1: it goes all the way around my ankle. Problem number 2 is it is close to another tattoo. Anyway, I am not sure how the forum works and I don't want to post a bunch of random stuff to get post count up enough that I'll see a post a new thread button, so I'll be patient and see how it goes and if I can post my question (with pictures) in another forum eventually, I will.