Since I love tattoos, I was wondering this:
1. Does anyone else have a passion for tattoos?
2. How many people have more than 5, because anyone can get one. I am looking for people who have sleeves, or even half sleeves, etc some major work...


Shaye

Reo any other providers or hobbyists have many tattoos??

Shaye,

I don't have any myself (unfortunately, it would be viewed as professionally incorrect) but I love them just the same. Check out Tattoo Magazine if you are not already familiar with it - it's published by the Easyrider folks. Website is www.tattoomag.com. The mag has feature stories on the areas you are interested in.

VtwinRider

The just seem like having clothes you can't change.  I mean who would want to wear the same shirt or one just like it every day for the rest of your life?  

And you can't just wash them off.

Guess they're fine if you need the attention you get.  But I think that they are really there because you don't like yourself the way you came.  It's a self esteem issue.

Reo any other providers or hobbyists have many tattoos??

I personally don't have any tattoos or even piercings, (do ears even count anymore?) but love to look at them.  I find them fascinating and the artwork is sometimes really incredible.  I do  wonder though, what makes you want to get numerous tattoos, knowing that it will be as much pain to remove as to get them there in the first place if you ever decide to do so.  I'm just afraid that later on in life, the things which floated my boat as a younger woman won't float it later on and I'll be sorry.

Reo any other providers or hobbyists have many tattoos??

I have had various piercings and just redid my belly button.  I contemplate long and hard on those, tho they CAN be changed.  As a woman, I like to change a lot of things about myself...but I am always in awe of those, men and women, who can commit to a tattoo.  I met a certain gent on his way to a tattoo convention while I was on the way to a salsa convention (there are conventions for everything!)  

After talking with him and listening to him explain his various tattoos, I came into a new appreciation of an outlook I had never experienced.  I was amazed at the thought that goes into tattoos, or at least in his case.  The trick is, I think to know exactly what you want...but what do you do if that changes?

I'd like to get one small tattoo to hide a scar, but I know me, I get moody and like to change things.  Plus I'm nervous that I might choose a terrible artist and he'll make a lifetime mess of my skin.  

Then again, for me, I just dont feel right in a tattoo. I would do it for aesthetics, so what other people think is important. And, maybe I'm more lace than leather, but I can totally respect someone who is willing to make the commitment to a lifelong work of art on their canvas.  Now that is really something!  I give you a lot of credit.

xoxo

Felicia

Reo any other providers or hobbyists have many tattoos??

Personally,

I think that they are very sexy if not overdone, and I find them erotic. That's my taste...

You bring up three good points.  I too like to look at them with some degree of fascination.  Most of my looking is at the magazine shop because I have no one in my life to look at the real things and you can't pull a stranger aside and ask for a long evaluating look.

As for the removal part.  They cannot be removed without residual markings.  The pigment of the tatoo is made of metals and metal oxides and is lodged into the basal cell layer of the dermis.  It stays because these cells do not exfoliate like the more superficial epithelial cell layers.

I too, being older perhaps, remember those hipppie days and what we used to do that bugged the establishment.  But now things have changed and so have I and I wouldn't do now what I did then.  Fortuantely for me none of what I did then was irreversible.  I also clearly remember a friend of my fathers telling me about the tatoo that he got while in the Navy.  He was not pleasedd about the decision he'd made when he was young.

One last thing.  I'm not sure that the pain is necessarily an undesired thing for some of these people.  Piercings?  What many never hear about are the infections that got out of control and the resulting scars from the skin grafts. I know of one case of a 3 month hospital stay and eventual loss of the limb from a necrotizing faciaitis.

Sometimes fun can be a real downer.

Hell yeah!

I am working on full sleeves... then to a back piece...then I think I am done..  LMAO... I say that now.

Ouch...that must hurt. I love looking at tattoos but couldn't imagine going through the pain and then I'm thinking....what happens when you get older and your skin gets flabby? Doesn't it start to look a bid weird? xoxo Nadia aka Legs of LA

Sadly as you can see from my pics.. I am already um... Well I wouldn't say flabby ... but then I try to be nice to myself.  LMAO

Skin bounces back with care as weight flucuates... as for the pain.. it is kinda like getting an intentional sunburn.... altho the pain goes away quickly.

I waited until I was 27 to get my first... and I love my body art... I have a daughter and I constantly hear "What will you do if she wants ink?"  And all I can say is that I will tell her to wait.  NO ink until over 18.  You need to be sure what you want on your person!

Rebecca

A good friend of mine got a tatoo of the Zig Zag man when he was 18 years old. Lots of people were getting tatoos, and it was relatively small and on his arm. A few years later, he quit smoking pot, quit drinking, and became a health nut. Worked out alot, ran a marathon, became a responsible father.  He changed. Wonder what his kids think of his tatoo?

Nothing wrong with getting a tatoo. But think long and hard about the consequences, and whether you will want it there twenty years from now.  And yes, I have a small tatoo as well. Not ashamed of it and have no desire to get it removed. Also no desire to get another one. But that's me. We are all entitled to make our own decisions, no matter how juvenile or stupid they may seem many years from now.

Body art is very interesting.  I currently have a dozen tattoos, mostly on my right arm.  I'm working on a sleeve on my left, and have one on my leg and back.  Of course people notice, but I really don't care unless they ask me if they're real.
And for the uninitiated, being tattooed isn't as painfull as you might think.  Some areas are worse than others, but it's actually like razor burn.  As for regretting my ink, I don't.  If I ever do, then I'll wear sleeves.