I encountered tattoos several times when I was very young despite the fact that no one in my immediate family had one. When I was 14 I saw a women with a tribal tattoo around her ankle and for some reason I was struck with the idea to tattoo a vine around my ankle. Several months latter I told my mom I wanted to tattoo a vine on my right ankle when I was older. She laughed it off and we went on with life.
At A Glance Author Uberkitty Contact Uberkitty@bme.anon IAM Uberkitty When Two years ago Location North Carolina When I was 18 I was living on my own and going to college. The thought of the vine tattoo had never left my mind...far from that I was planning a full body suit though I had yet to go under the needle a single time. The vine would work well within it so I decided to make it my "test" so to speak. Something I could leave at that if I wanted or continue with and expand upon as planed.
I began looking for an artist. I asked around looking for suggestions and found a place relatively close by. I stopped by and looked at the artists' portfolios before deciding who I wanted to work on me. I chose the artist with the best color work because that was really the only "fuzzy" part in my mind. I got an estimate and made an appointment for two weeks later.
In those two weeks I drew and redrew what I wanted the vine to look like. I'm no artist so this took quite a bit of effort and more hours than I would want to admit. I measured around my ankle and drew the entire length of it. The day of my appointment I finalized my design and traced a clean version of it in black and white (I had erased over and over in my quest for perfection.)
I hopped the bus to the tattoo parlor and was more than a bit early. I talked to people in the shop waiting to be worked on by the other artist. This helped take my mind of my upcoming tattoo, a very good thing given that at this time in my life I was absolutely terrified of needles. My artist arrived and I handed him the picture I had drawn. He asked me about the colors I wanted and I said I really had no idea other than just green and I would leave it up to him. He measured my ankle then disappeared for a few minutes before returning with a stencil he had draw (barely any different from my original) for my approval. It looked wonderful to me so we went back in his room and I watched him set up.
Once he had the tattoo gun assembled and the tray of individual ink wells and sanitizers ready I rolled up my pants and he cleaned my ankle and brought the stencil out. He held it over my ankle and asked if that was where I wanted it. I said I wanted it a bit higher so it raised it all of a single millimeter and asked if that was ok. I said still higher and he raised it another millimeter. I guess being a tattoo artist makes you really precise with permanent placement but if it went on like this it was going to take forever. I didn't want to waste his time so I was exact this time and told him one more centimeter. He raised it up the 3rd time and it was prefect. He pressed it to my skin and connected it around the back. He told me to stand up and check it in the mirror before he started. I turned around and made sure to see the entire thing. It was just like I wanted so I sat down in the dentist chair and told him to start.
He changed gloves and dipped the needle into the black ink well. He asked me if this was my first tattoo. When I told him that is was he said he was just going to start with one tiny line so I would know what it felt like and that he would wait for my approval to actually start on the entire thing. I was also told that if I needed a break at any time to just tell him.
He spent about two seconds on the first line and stopped. I told him almost immediately to go on. The pain wasn't bad at all, in fact it was unlike any pain I had ever felt before and I found it incredibly interesting. It was tingling and stinging all at the same time. As he worked little beads of blood would come up and he would frequently wipe it away along with the extra ink. The entire tattoo took about an hour and fifteen minutes. When it was done he bandaged it and gave me the aftercare instructions (basically just Lubriderm 2 or 3 times a day.) I paid, tipped and headed home.
I took the bandage off after about two hours and cleaned by letting warm water run over it and blotted it dry. (I poured it about 4 inches above the tattoo and let it run down, instead of pouring it directly on the tattoo.) I didn't have any lotion without perfumes or dyes so I waited and bought some the next morning.
For about the first day and a half there was some minor swelling in my ankle. The tattoo quickly scabbed up and I tried to keep them on as long as possible. After about a week and a half all the scabs rubbed off in my sleep leaving the new, very shinny skin exposed.
It's been around two years now and my tattoo needs a few touch ups but I never made it back to the shop. I'm not really in a hurry and don't want to go back to the same place anyway. It has scarring in some places that you can feel if you rub your fingers over it so I've been putting vitamin E oil on it in the hope that it will improve. Some of the outlining is shaky and uneven and bits of the shading don't blend very well. It's not terrible, it can certainly be fixed when I get around to it but I guess it shows that sometimes just looking through a portfolio isn't enough.