smoking

after having smoked for almost four years of my young life, i have realized that the time has come to quit.
well, the time has almost come. i still need to smoke during the tattooing process or else i panic and the artist can't work because i'm moving too much. we found this out the hard way (i picked a really bad time to quit)
but tattoos aside, come the end of today (we finish the last of the color tonight, but i won't have pictures until later, so you don't get to see it until it's DONE) i will stop smoking. this sucks. my fiance isn't ready to quit just yet, so he will get to smoke while i want to scream at him because i can't, but i think it'll be okay. at least we won't kill each other like we might if we quit at the same time.
wish me luck, for some odd reason i think i might need it.

empty words for empty hearts

i sat listening yesterday to a friend i really didn't know that well, spill out for me all of his anguish over losing a boyfriend of a year plus. i watched him tell me about the pain of rejection after he gave everything he had, and not being enough, as the tears built up in his eyes. but he refused to cry over it agian.
i listened to his heartache and thought, i've been there. but i said nothing. i nodded and gave my most sympathetic face, but at the time when he needed something most, because i remember needing something from the person i refused to cry in front of, i had nothing to say, nothing to give him.
what do you say to someone whose pain is so raw? how do you tell them everything you wish would make them feel better? when listening just isn't enough, i find mysef completely out of my depth, and remembered that i found no comfort in the empty words my friends had given me.
what do you do in that situation? what can you possibly say that has meaning?

next time i want to be prepared so:
suggestions, anyone? what was the best advice you ever got from a loved one or a wise one in a terrible situation?

the shading

allright folks, here's what i've got so far:

the left shoulder:

the right shoulder:

the center:

the bottom left:

and the bottom right:

Which, placed together int he correct positions give us a lovely overview of

the whole damn thing

it wasn't bad at all, and i love the way it looks

you gotta love progress

after many days of healing at home and forgeting how much this shit hurts, i came back to school and back to the shop to keep on working. i have come to both fear and love the sound of a tattoo gun, and the man who i am paying to do this to me.
but after two days and a total of six and a half hours, the shading is finished.
i don't have pictures yet, but i will soon and then you can see how lovely it really is.
six days and then we start the color, and then it's bloody done.

i look like a burn victim with all the gauze on my back right now.

The Outline

Ladies and gentlemen, the outline is done!

I go home for spring break and then when i come back healed, we start the shading and coloring.

tattoo pictures!

this actually isn't all right now, i got four more on the bottom, but i don't have a pic yet.

it itches! oh god it all itches so bad!!!

Here's a new one:

back with the center piece done

I finally got some pictures of my tattoos up:

My back tattoo so far - just the top outline

Hand without blacklight




Hand with blacklight

hand tattoos suck

i don't have a picture yet, but i should soon.

last night i got a black light tattoo on my hand in the shape of an outline of a rose. black light tattoos only fluoresce in black light, so no one will be able to see it in regular light, hence tattoo on the hand being okay.
fun fact: the first black light tattoo ink came out of california and caused cancer.
the ink used on me is the same kind that my tattoo artist used on both of his hands, does not come from california, and so should not (hopefully) make my hand rot and fall off.

black light tattoos can be done three ways:
1) the artist sets up a black light over the tattoo area and uses that to see the ink. this can be difficult because then the tattoo gun glows and so do the paper towels and the excess ink, and the stencil can be almost impossible to see and so it is distracting and can make things harder, plus it's bad for the eyes.
2) the artist puts the stencil on the skin and then goes over it like he/she would with any other tattoo, hoping that the ink is going in along the lines. (this is not as scary as it sounds considering that the excess ink welling up out of the skin makes it impossible for the artist to see any tattoo they are doing exactly - it's mostly guess work)
3) the artist does a "blood line" first, which is basically doing the tattoo once with something harmless in the gun, like the greensoap they use to clean the tattoo. this makes a wound track which is much easier to see and follow than just the stencil, and cannot wear off like a stencil can.
guess which one we did?
the blood line hurts like hell, and then when it was done we had to do it all over again.

but now i have a lovely rose shaped wound on my hand that glows in black light.
Yay!

tattoos...

so one night i got the bright idea that i wanted a back piece ... a tattoo that covers my entire back. it will be huge. and bright. and really freakin' painful.
i contacted my tattoo artist and for a little bit more than my what my first car will cost, i can have almost my entire back covered in roses and leaves and vines in the most lovely design that i have ever seen, and it will even match the rose on my shoulder.

so the problem is that i can't reach all of my back to get ointment on the wounds... or wash them... or really care for them at all on my own. thank god for friends.
imagine the awkward conversation of "hey friend, if i throw on a pair of trunks and put a towel over my chest, will you help me scrub my back?" cause that's not wierd.

but non the less, next tuesday the games shall begin, and i will either be so loaded up on pain killers that i can't see, or the biggest bitch in the world that can't sit back in a chair or sleep on her back.
god i love tattoos.

and when i figure out how to work a camera, there will be pictures of the finished piece on this site, so anticipate greatness!

i'm so terrified i'm hyper.