Tattoos

I have eight tattoos, ten if you count each tattoo separately.

I had this tattoo done right after 9/11/2001. Greg was deployed a week later and a week after that I had this done, September 27, 2001. I’d been thinking about it for a while. It’s on my lower back and yes, it hurt. The red ink stung a lot. The date is the date we were married. I was 37 when I had it done.

I had the next two tattoos done on April 3, 2007 . I thought about what I wanted for years, 6 years in fact, since getting my first tattoo. I rescheduled these tattoos twice with another artist, but finally got them done at a place that I had never been to before.

The tattoos are of my daughter’s names and their birth dates.

Here’s all of them together, finally healed. They are on my lower back, kind of low.

Here’s a photo of my flower tattoo, a violet. It was done on August 7, 2007. This is an updated photo, it’s healed! It’s on my upper right shoulder. This is in honor of my first grand-daughter, Violet.

I saw a magnet with Faith Hope and Love symbols, and the verse from 1 Corinthians 13:13 on it: And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I bought the magnet and took it to the tattoo guy I go to, Adam, and we worked out a design that looks almost exactly like the magnet, but it’s going vertical up my arm vs. horizontally.

Anyhow, here’s the photo, this was tattooed on October 1, 2007:

It’s on the inside of my inner right arm. Yes, it hurt, but, not nearly as bad as the ones on my back, which really surprised me a lot. It took about a half hour, he went over the anchor and the cross again with a shading needle as it looked like my skin didn’t take the color in some little areas. The heart is near my wrist. He went up my arm a little as the part that wrinkles when you bend your wrist back will not heal correctly if tattooed. I love it!

This was a big step for me. I’m now wearing a tattoo showing my love for God on my arm. My first tattoo that isn’t on my back. I guess if you want to put it out there for everyone to see, it should be something meaningful.

This is one of my tattoo artists, Adam. He gave me the two tattoos of my daughter’s names, the violet tattoo and the one of the cross, anchor and heart. He’s bending down as I’m short!

This one is on my upper left shoulder. It was done on June 27, 2008, by Keith. It’s a rose with a pearl in the center. The rose is something I’ve wanted for a long time and the pearl is in honor of my grandma. Her name was Pearl and she died in 2003. She taught me a lot of things about life and cooking as well as just how to be a good person.

You can see both the rose and the violet in the photo below:

I went to Keith on October 17, 2008 and had these two tattoos done:

He also updated my rose! He told me that he’d been thinking about doing more to it since I walked out with it back in June! Here’s the results:

And here are Keith and I:

I don’t plan on getting any more in 2008, so stay tuned for 2009!