Kristin's Disneyana Sleeve

We're clearing out our pre-pandemic backlog and today featuring some Disney-themed tattoos spotted at the Coney Island Mermaid Parade back in June 2018.

I met Kristin pre-parade at the Coney Island Brewing Company and talked to her about her arm.

In addition to the piece at the top of the arm,

but also features Cinderella and Prince Eric.

She also has this Ariel piece:

She credited the work to artist Joe Budds at Monarch Tattoo in New Jersey.

Thanks to Kristin for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2021 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.

Nicole McCarthy's View of Space (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next tattooed poet is Nicole McCarthy, who sent us this photo:

Nicole explains:

"This tattoo came about from a night spent at the top of a crater on Maui. I had been peering into a telescope all night, spotting globular clusters and the rings around Saturn, when our guide asked us to look up. And there it was: part of the Milky Way rising over us. I felt so cosmically insignificant and it was such a beautiful feeling. It reminds me that nothing truly matters, so my writing and my art will always be what I want it to be, not something dictated by others. I got the Earth's moon and a collection of abstract nebulas tattooed on my shoulder 3 years later.

The artist for this tattoo is Sara Kay (@thesarakay) who owns her own shop called Parlour in Seattle."

You should definitely check out Sara Kay's Instagram and see more of her amazing work.

Nicole sent us this poem:

do you ever imagine your life as a peach?


the anticipation of fingers grazing the skin
someone to nuzzle softness
smell the delectable potential
and pluck you straight from the tree
with a palpable hunger
juices dripping down their chin
emboldening their tongue into action
a gesture of consumption
leaving their lips sugared & fingers sticky

i think about that peach
that was plucked
when ripe
and left
without being bitten
on the fencepost
in an august heat.

~ ~ ~

Nicole McCarthy earned her MFA from the University of Washington. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Offing, Redivider, Glass: a Journal of Poetry, The Shallow Ends, Dream Pop Press, Crab Fat Magazine, Ghost Proposal, Tinderbox Poetry, The Fem, Memoir Mixtapes, Civil Coping Mechanism's A Shadow Map anthology, FIVE:2:ONE Magazine,and the 2018 Best American Experimental Writing anthology from Wesleyan University Press. Her work has also been performed and encountered as projection installation pieces throughout Tacoma and Seattle and her written work can be found at nicolemccarthypoet.com. She is a 2018 Artist Trust GAP grant recipient.

Thanks to Nicole for sharing her cool tattoo and lovely poem with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2019 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.net 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.

Jeevika Verma - dark, darker (The Tattooed Poets Project)

Our next tattooed poet is Jeevika Verma (@_jeevika), who generously shared several tattoos with us. 

Photo via Instagram

 Jeevika tells us:

"I wrote a poem titled 'dark, darker' in Rome. It was the summer of 2016, and I was part of an intensive one-month creative writing program organized by the University of Washington. I’d spent the month thinking deeply about what it meant to delve deeper into the unknown, and how the truth often exists in what cannot be seen. Plus, I was one of the only POC in my program, and I was constantly aware of how my brownness played into my relationship with my classmates, and my relationship with Europe. I got this tattoo to commemorate my last day in Rome."

She also shared this shot from Instagram above her knee, "alluding to the bray of Sylvia Plath’s heart 'I am, I am, I am' ”:

Photo via Instagram

Jeevika also sent us this photo of her arm, which has several tattoos:

Jeevika elaborates about the four tattoos seen on her left arm above:

" 'this,' is the first tattoo I got. I got it at a shop in Mumbai when I was 18, and just about to start college. I designed it to make it look like it’s part of a larger sentence, like there’s something more to be said before and after the word. 'this,' reminds me to stay in the present. Plus, I love playing with the word 'this'. When people ask me what my favorite tattoo is, I point to it, and say 'this.'

Surrounded by 'this,' are all the the things that help me remember who I am. A full moon rules my zodiac sign, in Cancer. A prickly pear is my soul-plant. Two hands open like wings, together, but each a separate entity."

She credited Randi Ftizpatrick (@probmchild) at Osprey Tattoo (@ospreytattoo) in Seattle with the hands, MKNZ (@ruffenough) from Valentine's Tattoo (@valentinestattoo) in Seattle with the cactus, and Gia (@giactattoo) at Fatty's Tattoos (@fattystattoosandpiercings) in Washington, DC, with the moon tattoo.

Jeevika shared the following poem, "dark, darker," alluded to in the first tattoo above. It was first published in Cleaver Magazine on March 22, 2017:

dark, darker

when I frown

into this mirror

a depth takes

my forehead

inside there is a little white man

sitting straight

working hard

flipping through

pages used unused

these are records

of me fighting gravity

like that one time

I did not kneel before

him

should I find a floor that will not reflect

how my teeth have shattered against it for centuries

like that one time

should I lay a drape over my upright head

the white in my eye has grown very yellow anyway

but the shadow of the obelisk is bent this way

I could grab that neck

twist it so

all the white drips

out

folds

into my lap

and collects

like the sweat

on my bare brown back

away from the mirror

there is no white here

I know

~ ~ ~

Jeevika says we "can also find poet Nikesh Murali's beautiful reading of [the] poem here."

Jeevika Verma is a poet from India with a passion for radical honesty. She graduated from the University of Washington in December 2016 with a B.A. in Creative Writing. Before college, she lived in Cameroon (Yaoundé), which is where she founded her own creative-literary journal Creative Chaos. Her work has been featured in NPR, Kajal Magazine, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Cleaver Magazine, Susie Magazine, and more. She also curated and edited the “Loving” Anthology, as well as five short zines, titled Turns, Cuts, Grate, Long Distance Newsletters, and Scale(s). Find Jeevika’s complete portfolio at jeevikav.com.

Thanks to Jeevika Verma for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2018 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.net 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: Zann Carter

Earlier this week, we featured a tattoo from Michael Lally, and he included a photo of his son's matching tattoo. Today, we have a similar mother-daughter combo.

Zann Carter is our tattooed poet today, and she sent us this photo:

Zann tells us how this moon came to be:

"My one-and-only tattoo was done at Solstice 2011, shortly after I turned 60. My daughter, Molly, visiting for our family winter celebration on Solstice Eve, suddenly suggested we both get a tattoo the next day. It was something she had mentioned some time before, as a Mother/Daughter thing. 

 'Maybe a little moon,' she had said, 'I'll get mine behind my ear, it'll be like you're whispering wisdom to me.'

What she didn't know was that I had occasionally fantasized about having a moon tattoo - a blue crescent moon, inspired by the priestess tattoos described in the book Mists of Avalon by Marian Zimmer Bradley. However, I was pretty sure I didn’t want mine in the center of my forehead!

Since the tattoos weren't large or elaborate, we were able to get an appointment the next day, with the artist of my choice, Amber McCarty [at Terre Haute Tattoo Company].   I picked her because she was the artist whose work I'd admired on the arm of a server in the deli, a gorgeous portrait tattoo.

Our day started at dawn, with my daughter and I 'rattling up the sun' in a Solstice ritual during which I had a rather startling return of a crystal point lost a few weeks before.

Then off we went to get tattooed. I remember I told my daughter it felt like many tiny bees. My daughter, who already knew the intense experience of getting a tattoo on her neck, described her behind-the-ear moon as 'a cat scratching, no, clawing...the same spot over and over and over.'

For me, my little blue moon connects me in a special way to my adult daughter, to that day, to the Solstice ritual we share, to the sweet little miracle of finding that crystal. It reminds me of my connection to the Goddess and Things of the Spirit that sustain me.  It reminds me that the extraordinary is all about, that ‘once in a blue moon’ is with me all the time."

And here is Molly's moon:

"My tattoo is her tattoo is my tattoo"

Zann also sent us her following poem:

Net 

Each day I examine what finds its way
into these waters, the shining things caught

 in my net.

I lay them out one by one, sounding
for metaphor, meaning, pretty noise.

Such riches in the ebb and flow:
here is the lovely vocabulary of astronomy.

Listen!

accretion disk, aphelion, apoapsis,
asterism, asthenosphere, azimuth, arc

and that’s only the A’s.

Here is the history of silk, the sad story
of bombyx mori,  a blind moth unable to eat or fly,
bred only to mate, lay eggs and die.

Her very best ending has her offspring boiled,
unraveled from their shrouds, piled in market baskets

and eaten,
while their perfect strands of silk are reeled, plied, woven.

The day’s big finds are stored away in my notebook.

Doomed worms and their cocoons,
a factory floating in the middle of a great lake
where lotus stems become fine threads,

and earnest girls twirling fire in poi pots on distant beaches,
their flames spinning into filaments of light

lingering on retinas.

~ ~ ~

Zann Carter is a poet and fiber artist in Terre Haute, Indiana. She co-hosts a monthly poetry reading now in its 8th year and chairs workshops on healing through expressive arts and storytelling. Her poetry has been published in  Ides of March, SageWoman, Dirty Chai, The Healing Muse, Misfitmagazine and is forthcoming in Witches & Pagans.  She has twice received Grand Prize in the Max Ehrmann Poetry Competition. Her desperately-in-need-of-updating website is at www.zanncarter.com.

Thanks to Zann for sharing her poem, as well as both her and her daughter Molly's tattoos here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2016 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos 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.

Vince's Half-Sleeve: One Dragon, Lots of Skulls

I met Vince last month on Broadway in Lower Manhattan last month and I asked him about his half sleeve. He was more than willing to share it:

The sleeve includes an old gnarled tree, a dragon clutching a skull, a rose, smoke additional skulls and a moon and stars.

Vince also has this section on his inner bicep:

The playing card, aflame with a skull-faced suicide king, is bright in the center of the inner arm. You also can see another flower with a skull peeking out.

Vince had the dragon inked twenty years ago at The Tattoo Shoppe in Carlstadt, New Jersey, but all of the surrounding work was done by Charlie at Lola's Tattoos in Bogota, New Jersey.

"There's a lot of skulls in there," he told me, "I just like skulls."

Thanks to Vince for taking the time to stop and share his cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2014 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.

Steven and Melissa's Friendship Tattoos

This summer outside of Penn Station, on the corner of 8th Avenue and 33rd Street, I met Steven & Melissa, who marked their friendship with matching tattoos:

This is how our discussion went:

Tattoosday: "So what's the story with that tattoo?"

Melissa: "It's a friendship tattoo..."

Steven: "Yeah, I'm a Cancer, so that's a moon, and it kind of describes our relationship, because she's an Aquarius and the moon controls water, it's a push and a pull, we balance each other out."

Melissa: "But he doesn't control me though...our first thing was that we found out that the moon controlled insanity and stuff, and we think we're really weird and crazy...that's what we were going with..."

Steven: "So a little of everything..."

Melissa: "Yeah."

You could tell they are close friends because their sentences overlapped and they seemed to be finishing each other's thoughts.

They credited the design and tattoo to an artist at NYC Kulture on St. Mark's Place in the East Village.

Thanks to Steven and Melissa for sharing their friendship tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2013 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.

Tattoorism: Sean Returns, Part 1

Back in 2009, one of our loyal readers, Sean, submitted a whole slew of his work for our viewing pleasure. You can read the original posts, here and here.

Why do I bring this up now? Last summer, Sean sent us more of his tat-alog of work and I had been saving it for a rainy day. Since it's a rainy, sleety, snowy day, I thought I should share more of what Sean sent along. And since he sent a lot, I'm splitting it into two posts. What follows is the first installment. Italics represent direct quotes from Sean.

I got the ditch of my elbow done probably about a year or so ago.  It is a flower of sorts, of my own design, made up of various geometrical shapes.  The tattoo represents two parts of our world, nature (the floral shape itself, petals, leaves, etc.) and science (the geometric shapes making up the flower).  I believe that one should not base their ideals solely on nature or science/technology, but on a mixture of the two.  It represents my appreciation for both nature and science.  Basically, I am fascinated by technology and the sciences that are its basis, but at the same time do not feel that science should trump nature all together but rather, have the two working together in harmony.  It was done by Robert “Binky” Ryan at Electric Tattoo in Bradley Beach, NJ.

The sparrows circling my outer elbow were my next pieces done.  I had attended a Marine museum in Philadelphia which had a great exhibit on the tattoo culture surrounding the Navy and sailors in general throughout history.  According to the exhibit, sailors would earn the right to a single sparrow tattoo after traveling 5,000 miles at sea and a second sparrow after 10,000 miles.  I am not much for sailing, but the idea of the sparrow representing travel and all the hardships, journeys, and successes that surround that travel appealed to me.  Further, I have a general appreciation for American Traditional tattoos and their overall aesthetics.  These were done by Rich Heller at Electric Tattoo in Bradley Beach, NJ. 

Don’t quite remember when I got my feet finished up, but it was sometime within the last year and a half or so.  My feet are tattooed with a sun and moon, which I drew myself about 6 years ago.  The duality of the sun and moon, and various meanings that these two symbols hold are why I had them tattooed.  The idea that each represents night and day, or two opposites that work together to make up a whole, are what drew me to having the designs placed on my feet.  Further, it represents the two sides that I have to myself, a lighter, happy, and caring side and a darker, selfish side.  I feel a person cannot fully understand themselves without acknowledging and accepting all parts of their personalities.  I also gave the sun and moon, a dark, kind of macabre, look as I am a huge horror fan and have always been attracted to the darker side of things.  Originally, I had them inked by Robert “Binky” Ryan (then at Body Art World in Pt. Pleasant, NJ but now Electric Tattoo in Bradley Beach, NJ) in 2004.  They were done in grey wash and I was happy with them for about 5 years, in which point I decided to have them colored in, and had some background added.  The color and background were added by Brody Longo at Slingin’ Ink in Pt. Pleasant Beach, NJ.

The next piece I got was an anchor on my inner forearm.  The anchor represents all the things that drag me down in life.  Across the anchor is a banner that reads “P.M.A.” the abbreviation for positive mental attitude.  I feel the first step in pushing through any kind of hardship in life is to have a positive attitude, and the rest will follow.  I want to say the original use of PMA was in a Bad Brains song, but I pulled it from its use in the Glassjaw song “Piano.”  This tattoo is also a throwback to the band Glassjaw, as they have been my favorite band for I would have to say at least 10 years now and I have experienced just about every emotion possible while listening to their albums.  So as an added bonus, the tattoo brings me back to all those memories.  The tattoo was done by Rich Heller at Electric Tattoo in Bradley Beach, NJ.


Thanks to Sean for sharing all of this with us here on Tattoosday, and for patiently waiting for me to post it!

Stay tuned for part 2.....

Darren's Trio of Tattoos

I was contemplating the best way to approach a rather imposing figure who was completely covered in ink, when Darren passed me at the entrance to K-Mart in Penn Station.

When I caught up to him in the store, I introduced myself and, being a piercer in a New York City tattoo shop, he was more than happy to indulge my curiosity.

Darren has three tattoos, all on his arms and crafted by Young Cho at Monster Tattoo in the Elmurst section of Queens.

The first piece, on his lower right arm, is a pin-up depiction of Lady Luck perched on a crescent moon:


The second tattoo is a half-skull that pays homage to Boys Night Out, a band in which one of Darren's friends plays:


This is the outer forearm on his left side.

Finally, we have this piece, which is more than just a few numbers and letters:

Located on his inner right forearm, this tattoo is translated as 40 degrees, 40 minutes, north latitude and 73 degrees, 9 minutes west longitude. These coordinates refer to a specific location in the world, in this case, a spot in the Great South Bay off the coast of Long Island. It was here that Darren's father loved to go fishing and the coordinates in question mark the spot where his father's ashes were scattered after he passed away.

I must emphatically state that this is one of the coolest memorial pieces I have seen. It is extremely thoughtful and creative, speaking to a point on the earth where Darren knows his father will remain, in spirit, for the rest of time.

I thank Darren for taking the time to stop and chat with me about his three tattoos here on Tattoosday!

Michaela's Tattoo Illuminates a Life

Yesterday at a street fair in my neighborhood (always prime ink-spotting locals), I saw this beautiful tattoo on the upper right section of Michaela's back:


When I asked her what the meaning of the tattoo was, she asked me "The real story?"

"Absolutely," I replied.

So she told me that years ago, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and she had this tattooed to remind her that there are two sides to everything. The moon and the sun serve as a solar/lunar yin-yang. I especially love how the moon wraps its limbs around the parts of the sun.

Often, whatever a diagnosis may be, finding out what is wrong (as opposed to not knowing) can illuminate a life. She gains strength from this tattoo as it marks a point when her disorder was defined, when a light clarified her situation in life.

This tattoo was done by Noel Wilkinson at The Tatt Shop in Perth, Australia. I believe this is Tattoosday's first sample of work from Autsralia.

Thanks so much to Michaela for sharing this lovely tattoo with us here on Tattoosday! I appreciate her courage in sharing the deeply personal meaning behind her tattoo, as well.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Alex Grant's Totemic Tattoos

Alex Grant is one of the many writers I have met through Facebook via the poet Dorianne Laux. Originally from Scotland, he lives in North Carolina, and sent me the following photos of his tattoos:


The top piece is “a variation on a Celtic totemic symbol …which…suggests totality - Sun, Moon, Stars and sky - and the celebration of all that implies...”.


The banded tattoo below the Celtic piece is a series of Mayan totem symbols. He interprets them as representations of “the cycle of sleep (as in having no awareness), through awakening, through full consciousness”.




These tattoos date back to the early 1990’s (circa 1994-1996) and were inked in Berkeley, California, at Zebra Tattoo & Body Piercing.

These are not the only tattoos Alex has He told me, “I have some others that I don't love so much - including some I did myself with a needle and ink at age 16!”

Thanks to Alex for sharing his work with us here on Tattoosday!

Please be sure to head on over to BillyBlog to read one of Alex's poems, or you can explore more of his work on his web page here.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Caroline Malone's Trio of Intimate Tattoos

Today's tattooed poet is Caroline Malone. She was kind enough to offer not one, but three, of her tattoos for our enjoyment.

Here they are, in her own words:

"Alien cat was my first tattoo in 2006.


I had always told myself I would never get a tattoo, but then I met someone, someone who turned out to be my sweetheart, who had a tattoo for each of her three novels, and I thought, what a great way to celebrate one’s published work. Since I don’t have a book of poems published, I became concerned that to honor each of my published poems, I would end of up with a substantial part of my body tattooed. So, I opted for a tattoo that would be a tribute to my sweetheart. Also, I love felines as does my sweetheart. I wanted to steer clear of clichés because I do consider myself a decent writer. It took me a few months to find the right design and choose a spot for the tattoo. I’m happy with the location [the upper right side of the chest, near the shoulder], but I probably picked one of the tenderest areas of the body for a needle to repeatedly pierce. The tail of the cat is in the shape of an inverted letter “J,” the first initial of my love, and it’s red because my sweetheart’s hair is red.

I had this tattoo done, as I did the other two, by Anna McClain at Saint Tattoo in Knoxville, Tennessee. Saint has won all sorts of awards. It’s THE place to go for quality, creative work. Anna’s work is distinctive, but you can’t really tell from the Alien cat. If you show your Anna-tattoo to tattoo people around Knoxville, they always recognize it as Anna’s work. My other tattoos show her talent. Anna is quiet and sweet, so even though I was practically shaking with fear over what was about to be done to my body, I went through with it because Anna gave me the confidence. The entire process took about 20 minutes – the tattoo is about as small as she could make it – and the only pain resulted from when the needle was close to the bone (I’m bony).

That first tattoo I gave to myself as a birthday present and the second was a year later, another birthday gift. My sweetheart and I had become close enough that I had a pet name for her, Mermaid, so I decided to have a mermaid tattoo as a kind of promise ring or something. It took me several months to find a design that wasn’t Disney’s The Little Mermaid or a fantasy-style mermaid. I took the design to Anna, and she worked for about 20 minutes to come up with a custom design.


I loved and love the tattoo running down my left hip, like a mermaid floating under the water. Also, I can see the tattoo without having to use a mirror, just like the alien cat. I personalized further by having my sweetheart’s first and last initials lettered in one of the air bubbles surrounding the mermaid. This one took about an hour and a half, and it hurt like hell because again, I’m bony, and the only relief came when Anna worked, briefly, on the small part of the design that extended to my ass. I think Anna was almost as excited about the final product as I was. I knew she liked working with color, and the alien cat was 95% solid black, and then just the snippet of red tail. This tattoo is so sensual and feminine.

My last tattoo came on December 22, my birthday, of last year. My relationship with JW had progressed, and so the moon tattoo is a testament to our growing intimacy.


The moon is symbolic for me in many ways, one of which is that one of my favorite novels by my sweetheart has the word “moon” in the title and is an important symbol in the book. I came up with the design by taking a sort of standard shape crescent moon, adding the flowing purple hair, and then asking Anna to add her special touch to it. She nixed my initial request for red hair because she said the moon would not be red, plus it would make it look angry, which is not what I was going for. She was skeptical about my desire to have the entire first name “Julia” in script as part of the moon’s hair, but she found a way to make it work. Anna did the perfect job of choosing colors, again creating such a sensual, dreamy image. My right hip isn’t any tougher than my left one; for some reason, this one hurt worse than the mermaid, and during the last thirty minutes of the process, I could feel my nails (and my nails are nothing to speak of in length) sinking into the little black leather pillow I was cradling. Luckily, I could then concentrate on worrying I was tearing up her pillow instead of the needle.

Before the tattoos, I wrote a poem for my sweetheart, trying to use tattoo as metaphor in a fresh way. I’ve been told the poem works because of its sensual qualities, which is different from other tattoo poems."

Head over here to read Caroline's poem, "Body Art".

A hearty thank you to Caroline Malone, not only for participating in the Tattooed Poet's Project, but for providing such a close, intimate look at her tattoos and the process behind them!

Fabiana Shares Two More Colorful Tattoos

A couple of weeks back, I posted some ink from a guy named Tom (here), which featured the trinacria of the Sicilian flag.

The above example, from our good friend Fabiana (see her last post here - which links to her previous ones, as well), is a more colorful and elaborate take on the design.

Fabiana explains:

"The tat of the Medusa head I got because it's on the Sicilian flag. I was born there and it reminds me of all that I left behind, kinda just reminds me of my fam there and the time I lived there and all the things I went through! I love Sicily! It's such a beautiful place, hope I can return there some day! So now I look at it and it takes me right back to where my life first began."

This piece is on her upper right bicep and, like most of her work, was inked by Lou at Third Eye Tattoo in Brooklyn.

Another relatively new piece on Fabiana is this card on her left forearm:


Again, in her own words:

"The other new one I have is the orange one that kind of looks like a card. I got that because of my ex-girlfriend. I used to say to her 'I love you to the moon and back and all the stars in the universe.' So because of that, I got a moon and seven stars with the color orange because that was her favorite. She meant a lot to me but things just didn't work out. I will love her always!"

Yet again, a hearty thanks to Fabiana for letting me post her ink here, and for sharing the deep personal meanings behind the tattoos.

Karen's Ink Balances the Physical and the Intellectual

Monday was a good tattoo day. I met Karen on Sixth Avenue in the 20's after her right ankle caught my attention and we chatted for a bit about tattoos.

The piece above is about 10 years old and is based on Northwestern Native American art. Karen studied art history in college and felt that this style of art is "smarter" and speaks in "more intelligent visual dialects" than other art forms.

This tattoo is based on "the dance of the wolf hunter". The following piece is similar in design.
It represents the physical aspect of her self.

Around 10 years ago, Karen finished college and drove up to Valdez, Alaska. She had no immediate purpose to go there, but she was just exploring, seeing that part of the country.

It was there, in a town so small that the grocery store often ran out of bread, that she found an amazing tattoo artist working out of a place called, appropriately, Valdez Tattoo. She didn't remember the artist but could recall that he was Hawaiian, which struck her as remarkable.

A quick call to the number listed on the net for Valdez Tattoo was a wrong number and the person who answered the phone wasn't aware of any tattoo shop nearby. So finding a link met with a dead end.

On the other hand foot, the physical aspect of the wolf tattoo seems, in her opinion, to balance the intellectual qualities of her other tattoo (on her left foot), which was inked somewhere in Chicago over 10 years ago.
Karen explains that the moon represents the feminine, and that the symbol within the moon is the astrological sign for Jupiter, which stands for knowledge and expansion of the mind.

Thanks to Karen for sharing her ink with us here on Tattoosday!

Brazilian Butterfly

It was a long week and I was heading home. I had just hit the subway station at 34th Street/Herald Square. The entrance I was using, by chance, was the Southwest exit into the Manhattan Mall. A woman walked by me with this tattoo:

I couldn't help it. I had to stop and ask her what the story was. Butterflies are pretty common as tattoo matter, but this was the most unusual and stunning one I had seen. This butterfly is unique in that she designed it herself and then worked with the tattoo artist in Nyack over a three month period to perfect the design.

The butterfly body consists of the symbol for infinity, which I thought was a cool touch to represent the eternal.

She was totally open to me taking closer shots of each of the four quadrants of the wings, each of which was a slightly different size, by design, so that no two aspects of her life were the same.

Renata is originally from Brazil, and the two bottom sections have ocean elements because she grew up in São Paulo, near the sea. The left and right bottom sections each bear the first initials of her parents, M & A.



The top sections are beautifully-rendered representations of the sun and the moon, completing the worldly representations in the wings of the butterfly.


Thanks to Renata for her time as she explained this marvelous tattoo to me. I gave her my e-mail address so she can send me the information on the artist, so he can get credit for this lovely piece of body art.