Erica Got Her Goat

Last July at the New York Empire State Tattoo Expo (#nyempirestatetattooexpo), I met Erica at the South Shore Tattoo (#southshoretattooco) booth. Erica is the shop manager and laser technician at South Shore's shop in Amityville, Long Island. One of the trends that has developed in some tattoo shops recently has been the partnering with laser removal services and, in some cases, even having a laser technician on site.

She was kind enough to share one of her own tattoos with us:

She credited this to one of South Shore's artists, Garden Mike.

She explained:

"He does a painting a day and I watch him every day and I fell in love with that, I'm also an Aries ... I fought him for the painting of the goat for like six months...and then when my laser finally got delivered, it was ... on my laser, the painting of the goat, so I was like, now I got ya!"

Thanks to Erica for sharing her cool goat tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Lennée Reid

Our next tattooed poet is Lennée Reid, who sent us this photo of her tattoo:

Lennée tells us:

"This tattoo is like my poetry, rich with natural,  native, and pagan symbolism.  The tree of life is an L for my name and has my astrological symbol, Aries, in its pattern.  My favorite colors, purple blue and green, are used in the flower blossoming and butterfly in flight transformation .  The happy cloud is off to the side above water which gives the whole picture depth and perspective.  I designed its concept.  It's a beautiful cover up done by Electric Rose in when it was on Harrison in Olympia, WA.  A cover up of the same design, smaller and poorly executed, by some dude in Iowa."

Lennée shared this poem, as well:

Totem 

The flight of a butterfly
Off of a beaver dam
Into the song of blue whale
Heard by the seal
Diving near the shore
Seen by the turtle
At home on a log
Watched over by bear
On her journey
To the waters that flow
From the source
High atop mountains
Only accessible
By the ram
Crowned with horns
Seeking from above
Guidance of the eagle
Who's always at home
Above the storms

~ ~ ~

Lennée Reid is a geeky veganish universalist QPOC witch doctor mama bear poet activist survivor goddess on the spectrum who doesnt like labels that uses punctuation when she d@mn well pleases smile emoticon period Lennée has appeared in the UPS DIRT! project, Creative Colloquy, godgirl,  and is forthcoming in Lost Tower.  Her poems and photos are often in "Works In Progress". Lennée repped Olympia Peoples Mic in NYC for WOWPS 2016 and has performed across the USA. Find her on everywhere online @lenneereid and mamamystic.wordpress.com

Thanks to Lennée for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2016 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Laici's Astrological Cluster

I met Laici last month outside of Penn Station, near the corner of 33rd Street and 8th Avenue. I was intrigued by this design on her upper right arm:

This design consists of several symbols from the Zodiac.

Laici explained, "My dad's a Cancer, my mom's an Aries, my sister and I are Scorpios, and my brother is a Sagittarius."


She designed this piece herself by combining the four symbols into a cohesive design:

The four elements combined on her arm to represent her family unit. It's a neat concept and it is executed rather nicely. I especially like how she combined the last two parts, Scorpio and Sagittarius, to form one fluid symbol that encapsulates her and her siblings together.

Thanks to Laici for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

The four Zodiac symbols illustrated above were linked from TattooSymbol.com.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Phoenix's Sleeve is Out of This World

Back on August, I met a man named Phoenix in Penn Station who shared the sleeve on his right arm.

The work starts near his shoulder, with a traditional-style pin-up girl straddling a rocket in an outer space motif:

The cat perched on the rocket in front of the woman represents Phoenix's love of animals.

The centerpiece of the sleeve, however, is lower on the arm and represents his love of astrology:

From a practical purpose, he had his natal astrological chart wrapping around his limb. In theory, he told me, anyone who knows astrology could come up and read his arm and gain insight into his astrological makeup.

Phoenix was born with the Sun in Aries rising in Leo and with his moon in Gemini.

This work was done by Lou at Third Eye Tattoo in Park Slope, Brooklyn, about six years ago. Lou's handiwork has been featured many times over the years here on the site and can be seen here.

Thanks to Phoenix for sharing his spectacular sleeve with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Katie's Astrological Ink: Cancer, with Aries Rising

One of the unexpected joys in inkspotting is approaching someone about a tattoo and having them reveal one that is so much better than the piece you approached them about. It's like receiving a bonus for being curious.

Such was the case with Katie, who I spotted in Penn Station when I noticed a tattoo on her ankle.

When I asked her about it, she laughed and said it wasn't even close to being her favorite tattoo and she took off her jacket to reveal, on her upper left arm, one of her eight tattoos:

This is an astrological tattoo and features the signs for Cancer (the crab) and Aries (the ram). Katie explained that she is a Cancer, with Aries rising.

What this means, astrologically, could take pages and pages of analysis, but Katie explained that the two personalities are both strong and that they traditionally don't get along, which is why she has this relationship depicted as the two symbolic creatures battling in a stormy landscape. It is one interpretation of an astrological description that lends itself to her personality. Here's another.

Of course, as a Cancer myself, I cannot help but love this tattoo, especially my old friend the crab:

Katie credited the artist Christian Masot at Silk City Tattoo in Hawthorne, New Jersey, for this tattoo. She estimated it took about seven hours total in three sittings to create the finished product. Work from Silk City has appeared on Tattoosday several times before (see this tag), but this is the first piece we've seen by Christian.

Thanks to Katie for sharing this awesome tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

An Aries Neck Tattoo

I met Stephen walking south on Sixth Avenue this week and I asked him about his neck tattoo:


This is a symbol for the astrological sign Aries. Check out another Aries tattoo on the blog here.

He had this done at Tattoo Nation in the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, New Jersey.

Stay tuned, he may be sending us more ink in the future. He has six tattoos in all.

Thanks to Stephen for sharing his tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Danielle's Stars and Signs Forever

Despite great inkspotting weather earlier this week, I found myself walking in Chelsea at lunch, marveling at the absence of tattoos.

I like to remind myself from time to time that Tattoosday is 70% tattoos and 30% about finding them.

So, I had walked down to one of our vendor's offices at lunch (13 blocks away) to get some forms we needed. I was on the elevator heading back downstairs when I noticed the woman next to me (who worked for the company I had just visited) had this interesting set of tattoos:


On the street, I may not have stopped her, but in an elevator, it seemed foolish not to.

Danielle had these tattoos (one of three total) inked at a shop in Long Beach, New York. She didn't recall the name of the shop or the artist who did the work, but she did mention that her fiance has a matching set of the three colored stars on his left bicep.

These stars and signs, tattooed on Danielle's inner right wrist, are decorative and, the three symbols represent Danielle, her mother and her sister.

From left to right, the three insignia stand for Libra (her mother's astrological sign), Gemini (for her sister) and Aries (her own Zodiac affiliation).

What I have found interesting about astrological tattoos, is that each sign of the Zodiac has a simple line representation, but that these symbols can be modified artistically in so many different ways. The whole range of astrological signs as interpreted by subjects of this site can be seen here.

Thanks to Danielle for sharing this cool tattoo with us here at Tattoosday!