It had been four months since I set foot in a tattoo shop with the exception of accompanying my friend to Houston so she could get a new tattoo, and I was itching for something new. I am a firm believer that tattoos are addicting; I waited until my 22 birthday (January 19, 2007) to get my first tattoo and this past Friday (July 20, 2007) was my third! Well, actually I just keep added on to the original tattoo, so it depends on how you look at it. I've been three times but have one large design.
At A Glance Author Angel19 Contact Angel19@bme.anon IAM Angel19 When It just happened Artist Verlyn Studio Deep South Tattoo Location Brazoria, TX (moving to Clute, TX) While I do love tattoos, I have a terrible time coming up with designs that I want. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of things that I like but not too many that I want to put on my body permanently. The day after my second tattoo session I began searching for my new design. I looked through books, magazine, searched the internet; I just couldn't wait for bmeink.com updates so I could find some inspiration. At first I was toying with the idea of getting a traditional koi on my right leg but after looking through tons of images I realized that I would have to spend a lot of time designing the whole picture before actually starting it, and was wanting something soon. So I came to the conclusion that the quickest thing would be to add some stars. I re-focused my search to just stars, I cut pictures out of magazines, created a file on my computer to save images from the internet (solely for inspirational purposes), and I even took a picture of the Mario Party 8 disk for the Wii. Then one day I came across the perfect image, a large star with lots of smaller stars inside of it and a curvy line behind it so it looks as if it were a planet. So I took a picture of the stars I already had on my leg and started playing around with an editing program until I figured out exactly what I wanted. Now that I had the design I just needed to work up enough money to get it. My husband and I bought this really cute change collector that counts your money as you put it in, and that became my tattoo fund. It keeps us from spending bill money on random stuff.
The tattoo shop is in the process of moving to a new location so they are working with appointments only. I asked Jon to call and make one, and it turned out that Verlyn's daughter was born that morning so he wasn't doing any work for a few days. We made the appointment for Friday night at 11:30, which was the earliest he had available. Friday rolled around and I was extremely excited which caused my day to go by really super slow. Around 10:30 Jon got hungry so we went ahead and drove into town, got him some food and then stopped by the shop to see if he might have finished early, which he did! We talked for a few minutes about some pictures he had laying on the table; they were ideas for another customer's sleeve. I handed him the picture I printed out and we discussed the placement, size, etc. Jon and I looked through the newest photos of his work and chatted with his girl friend while he got everything ready. (His girl friend and I met when I came in to get my first tattoo and have been friends ever since!)
He looked over and said he was ready so I walked around the counter, took my shoes off and hopped into the chair. He put the stencil on and asked me if I was happy with the placement, which I was. Then he asked me if I wanted the quite or loud machine. At first I was startled because I wasn't expecting a choice. Jillian, his girl friend, said I should go with the quite one, so I did. He positioned my leg on the stool so that it was as comfortable as possible for me but still a good working angle for him. I was chatting with Jon and Jillian and all of a sudden I felt him start work. Yes exactly, I felt it before I heard it. I was amazed at how quite that machine really was, though it did take away that feeling you get right before your tattoo when you hear the machine for the first time.
Anyway, he was working on my leg and we were all talking when he stopped... I looked over and he was a bit frustrated because apparently the quite gun had a slower speed to it or something and it was giving him problems. So he switched to the original one, nice loud and a little bit more painful. He jokingly said he always prefers more horsepower. He went back to work on my leg, and I have to say I expected this tattoo to hurt a lot more the previous ones but surprisingly it didn't; once he was done with the outlines it felt as if those areas were numb. I just assumed that a larger area being completely filled in would hurt more. I think the worst part about the entire tattoo was when he was removing the stencil so he could fill it in, it felt like he was spraying alcohol on an open wound. It took a little more then an hour to complete and that included setting up. He cleaned my leg up, washed his hands, put on some new gloves and as he covered my big star with a bandage he said that it would definitely need to be touched up but if he were to keep working it would chew me up like hamburger meat. I was laughing and told him that it was fine my hip and knee were hurting anyway. I hopped out of the chair and put my shoes on while Jon was paying him, it was actually cheaper then I expected. I pulled some more money out of my pocket to give him as a tip, and while I was talking with Jillian Jon got me one of the shop t-shirts and we left.
The next day I took the bandage off, cleaned it up and rubbed a little bit of Vaseline on it so my skin wouldn't dry out. I went to the store and bought some capri's so I could show off my new tattoo. Now that the big star is on the bottom it all looks proportioned right, as if that were my design all along. I love it!