A Little Tattoo Maintenance

Hmmm…I think this is my fourth post about tattoos on this blog. Which, I guess isn’t THAT crazy considering I’ve been blogging for almost 11 years now.

Let’s see, I first posted Tattoo back in 2014 where I talked about my first two small tattoos and my plans for a half-sleeve on my arm. Then, in New Ink: From Start to Finish from 2016 I went through the whole process of deciding on my half-sleeve and answered a bunch of questions. Finally, on More Ink: A Tattoo Update my sleeve grew a little and I added another row of flowers to bring it down closer to my elbow.

Well, looks like it’s time for another tattoo update.

I finished the main section of my sleeve about 6 years ago and then “the addition” about 5 years ago. Well, over the years all the colors have held up beautifully… except one specific purple. What started off as a beautiful, vibrant dark orchid shade had faded. It turned into a light lavender and you could see the gray shading at the base of each of the leaves.

Here’s a comparison photo:

The left image is from when I shared my initial sleeve on the blog in 2016. The right image is the one I sent to my tattoo artist to show how that one particular color didn’t like my skin.

Anyways, I wasn’t happy with it so I decided to do a little color maintenance. I made an appointment with Eric, my fabulous tattoo guy, and it took a couple months to get on his schedule.

I figured, while I was getting poked at… I might as well address another small tattoo issue. I had wimped out about having the tattoo wrap further around my arm because frankly the closer you get to the inside of your bicep the more painful it gets. I mean, the whole tattoo thing doesn’t feel great, but DANG the closer you get to the white underbelly gets really SPICY!

Anyways, since this was going to be a short session, I figured I might as well go for it. I asked my artist to bring the tattoo around a little further with leaves and shading. He’s the expert, so I just told him to do what he wanted to and let him buzz me.

With this last session taking a little over 2 hours, it brings my sleeve total hours up to right around 20 hours.

That’s right, I’ve had a tattoo gun on my arm for TWENTY HOURS. Completely worth it to me though, because I love my sleeve. Even more now with the recent additions! Also, it’s fun when young men come up to me (it’s always the 20-year-old bro’s) and ask how long my tattoo took and I tell them about 20 hours and watch their eyes bug out of their heads.

I tried super hard to get comparison photos of the before and after and I have to say it is REALLY hard to get angles of your own arm.

Here’s the front of my arm from before and then after my recent session:

And here is a better before/after of the purple mum which is now a medium pink mum with much more consistent shading:

While Eric was in there, he also did some fresh outlines and shading on the top of my arm, which you can see here:

As always when I finish a session, I tell my tattoo artist that I’m done. Completely done now. And he every single time he says, “okay, I’ll see you next time.”

So, until next time!

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2 thoughts on “A Little Tattoo Maintenance”

  1. Do you ever think of doing a little on the other arm? I love the colors and flowers, the shapes of them, too. It looks great!

    1. No, I like the look of just one sleeve for me. I have occasionally thought of getting a small tattoo on my right arm — I have to have my blood drawn every few months and it typically takes multiple pokes to find my tiny veins. So I’ve tossed around the idea of getting a small bee tattooed with the stinger pointing to EXACTLY where to stick me!

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