3 and three quarter hours of agony...and it ain't even finished yet :)

But boy it’s going to be fab when it is.

Yes, yesterday was tattoo day.

And my post title isn’t really accurate, the first 2-3 hours were actually surprisingly bearable, but by the last hour or so, I was really feeling it, ow ow ow ow ow ow!!!

Before you read any further, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that the dark shadow in the bottom left of the main photo of the tattoo below is just spare ink which I have since washed off. It’s not dirt :) Or fat shadow :P But that’s what it looks like at first glance, ewwwwww.

Once finished, my tattoo will look like this:

So far, Mike (Hervin, from Skin Graffiti in Swindon, who is a very nice and very talented chappy) has done the first coat of the majority of the blackwork. I’m going back in 5 weeks time for him to finish off the black, and add the red and blue.

He had a hell of a job getting everything positioned right to avoid all my moles :) Which is why the baby orca is a little lower down on my back than in the original picture. But he sorted it out perfectly in the end - even capturing one of the moles in the baby's blowhole lol

Despite having signs up everywhere promising all sorts of devilish punishments for anyone caught using a camera on the premises, Al the piercer was kind enough to take a couple of pics for me of Mike at work on my back, it’s the ex-scrapbooker in me – I might not scrapbook any more but I still have an over-riding need to record everything in photographs :)


I must admit, a long tattoo sitting like that is a whole lot different to a quick one-hour jobbie. I have never felt disoriented after a tattoo before. But after this one I was all over the place. I was attempting to chat to Mike about cameras / photography etc – he has a Canon EOS 400D and wanted a few tips on best use of all the different settings – and I just couldn’t get my words out. I couldn’t even remember the words for aperture and shutter speed etc. Total brain freeze. I guess it’s the brain’s response to that low level but constant pain over a long period – it must release funny chemicals that stop you functioning normally.

I wasn’t ready to drive home straight away – but a quick walk around town in the sunshine – and a trip to Boots to get my bepanthen cream – cleared my head and I felt all normal again.


And now I feel fine – my bra strap was a bit annoying this morning (felt like wearing a bra over a sunburnt back, a bit) – but I seem to have got used to it now.

Roll on June 24th – I can’t WAIT to see it all finished :)