Inked

This weekend hosted the sixth annual Alamo City Tattoo Show, where I spent the majority of my weekend.  It had more than eighty booths, some of which where merchandise and supplies, but most were of out of town tattoo artists.  Most of those were from Texas. My original goal for attending this event was to review portfolios and interview local artists to get some work done sometime in the future.  I drug Courtney, Andrea, Brittany, and Amanda to attend with me.  And with them supplying second opinions and support, I surpassed my original goal and got inked.

I had a unique request for the concept of my tattoo.  At least, it seemed unique to me.  I wanted a visible secret, something that you wouldn't notice unless you looked for it.  I already had the design picked out too: a dual Celtic trinity knot.  In the pagan Celtic mythology, the trinity knot was a kind of homage to the female deity.  It represented the three stages a woman goes through in her life: the virgin, the mother, and the crone.  After the Christian invasion of the area, the trinity know was adopted by the Church as another symbol of the Holy Trinity.

The artist who finally did my piece was Erica Long from Majestic Tattoos in Pasadena, Texas.  She was able to match an ink color to my skin tone.  When it heals, you'll only be able to see my tattoo if you're looking for it.   This is my first tattoo, and I'm not gonna lie, it hurt, as evidenced by the expressiveness of my face during the process.  It only took thirty minutes or so to complete the piece, as much time as it took to set up.

Andrea was inspired by the design I chose and got the same for her, again in her skin tone color.  She said getting it on her wrist was more painful than either of her other tattoos.  But it didn't hurt near as much as Courtney's, whose stretched down her side from rib cage to hip bone and took five hours to do.  Her tree piece is beautiful and she showed so much strength in the process of getting it.

 

There was a lot of skin showing at the convention center this weekend.  Male, female; tall, short; skinny, not-so-skinny.  The fabulous thing about the popularization of tattooing in recent years:  appreciation of the human body in all its forms, acceptance of individuality, and a higher prevalence of healthy self image.  The Miss Tattoo contestants had pin-up hair and makeup styles which, to me, juxtaposed classic beauty themes with the more modern expressions.   Though the large woman walking around in a thong to display her leg and butt tattoos was a little too much for me, I appreciate the obvious display of her comfort in her own skin. 

After a couple of long days out in Live Oak, I count the time well spent.  I wonder though, if anyone else noticed that they forgot to print the hand stamps in mirror image.