time for fresh ink

I have a tattoo. One, measly, “baby’s first” tattoo. Yes, I realize that it’s one more than a lot of people have, but me… I’d wanted ink since I was in my early teens. The catch was waiting to turn 18… and then trying to find something that I could live with FOREVER. The design on my ankle, drawn for me by my sister on the very day I was born, could not be more perfect. My BFITWWW, Mandy, had her ankle inked on the same day, and we considered it a sort of rite of passage into “well, I guess this is as adult as we’re gonna get.”

That was nearly seven years ago.

I am aching for more. And this time, after having experienced the same surgical laser procedure that is used to remove tattoos, I can say that coming up with something I can live with forever is definitely at the forefront of the design process. I’d been tossing around some ideas more and more vocally, when Erin suggested that we get inked together, before she moves to OKC, to commemorate our time together. Which is a lovely idea… but she leaves in July. Now, I have a deadline. I keep coming up with ideas, but nothing seems as solid as the drawing that my sister did. One concept has been rolling around for a year, refusing to die, but I haven’t hammered it out yet…

After spending the past weekend in Las Vegas with a fabulously decorated RAB crowd, I’m trying to get myself to ease up a little. Whatever I get, will be a record of whatever I was feeling in that moment. I might even break my “nothing on my back, where I can’t see it” rule because that one idea I have in mind would look best across my shoulders or as an upper chest piece, and if it isn’t absolutely, inhumanly perfect… frankly, I’d rather not be able to see it.

So, I’m hoping to talk to an artist in person this week, and float a few concepts past him. He’s the guy with the gun, so I’m sure he’ll have some wisdom to impart. And if he comes across as a twit, well, then I keep looking.