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By infmom, July 31, 2009 11:40 pm

As I mentioned in the last post, it’s been hot lately in Los Angeles.   This means I am almost always wearing a shirt that shows off at least part of my swirly-stars tattoo over my right collarbone.   People notice it and often ask me what the rest of it looks like, and it’s easy to show off.

That often leads to conversations about tattoos, or getting tattoos, or the other person’s ink, which is all to the good.     One of the receptionists at our veterinerians’ office has a star tattoo that looks a lot like mine, so we were instant friends.  

The other day, as we were checking out at the grocery store, the cashier noticed my stars and we got to talking about a tattoo she’s planning to get soon, that has a lot of personal meaning for her.   She’s really looking forward to the experience.   After we finished the conversation and walked on, my husband made the suggestion that it would be a good idea for me to have business cards with the URL of this place, so I could invite people to come have a look.   He was right!   That definitely falls into the category of “Why didn’t I think of that?”

I started designing cards, using a business-card-design app I’ve had for years, but after I’d messed around with it a while I realized that to do justice to a multicolored design I really should get the cards professionally printed on paper that’s better than you can buy at the office supply store.

Which leads me to tell you about a company called MOO. Ayear or so ago, they opened up a LiveJournal, and offered a free package of MiniCards to other LiveJournal writers.   I took them up on that, getting a nifty design with my cat Caliban’s eyes on them.   I still have a few of those left, because I like them so much I have been hoarding them.   I thought the MiniCard size would be perfect to carry around in a pocket and hand out to fellow ink admirers, and when I discovered they had a beautiful multicolored design with a triskele in the center, I was sold.   I also ordered a plastic keychain case to carry the cards in so they won’t get crunched up in my pocket or purse.

MOO is located in the UK, but they can now ship from within the USA as well (and if they’d for pity’s sake open up an office in Los Angeles I’d be first in line to apply for a job) so I should have the cards in hand next week.   Can’t wait!

I wish this had dawned on me earlier, because my stars are a good conversation-starter and it’d be even better if someone with whom I’d been talking could come here and say hello.     Onward and upward!

If you’d like to check out MOO for yourself, they offer a free sample pack of business cards.   Go here and scroll down the page, you’ll see where to click. If you get some, you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.

photo credit: FiveAcres

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By infmom, July 24, 2009 12:14 pm

I haven’t been writing much lately, because the 104^o heat around our not-air-conditioned house in the San Fernando Valley has made all kinds of things slow down. We close the windows and pull down the shades early in the morning before it starts heating up, and the house is never as hot as the outside, but still, day after day in a house that comes close to being 90^o gets wearying pretty quickly.

All of which got me to thinking about how one cares for tattoos in hot weather and abundant sunshine. Since I don’t have any new ink and I don’t spend a lot of time in the sun (I am a melanoma survivor) I don’t have to do much out of the ordinary. But for those of you who are in different situations, here are some suggestions.

If your ink is new and is in an area usually covered by clothing, be sure to wear lightweight fabric and loosely fitting clothes. Find some clothes at the thrift store that have a fairly busy pattern so that any weeping ink or stains won’t be so noticeable–and that you won’t mind discarding and replacing if need be. If your ink is new and it’s usually visible, do your best to stay out of the sun till it heals. The chemicals in sunscreen are not good for injured skin.

If you sweat on newly inked skin, it will sting.   You might want to keep some soft cotton handkerchiefs on hand to blot away sweat without hurting your ink.   Once again, the thrift store is a great place to look, and you can just toss the handkerchiefs when you no longer need them.

Sun has been known to fade the colors in tattoos (red is especially susceptible) and to make the ink change color (most noticeably, some black ink turns a murky dark blue or dark green). Once your tat has healed, obviously it’s important to protect it from the sun. Make sure you wear sunscreen and keep the ink out of direct sunlight as much as possible. If you go swimming, you need to be aware of the power of sunlight reflected off the water as well. The worst sunburn I ever got was when I thought I was safe because I was in the water.

What happens when tattooed skin gets sunburned? You need to be extra careful not to pick at it if it starts to peel, and you need to be extra careful not to let it get burned again. You paid a lot of money and put a lot of creativity into your ink, and it would be a shame to have it turn into a murky mess because you didn’t take simple precautions.

Do you have a sun-vs-ink tale to tell? Let me know.
photo credit: island home

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By infmom, July 5, 2009 12:49 pm

New tattoos can take a surprisingly long time to heal completely.  How you treat them during the healing time has a lot to do with how they’ll look afterwards.  This is definitely a time to be in no hurry.   But let’s say you’ve followed all the instructions, and now it’s weeks later and your tattoo is still itching, or oozing, or swollen?  Something’s not right.

Tattoo ink is not an inert substance.  The pigments in it can cause allergic reactions, and unfortunately there really is no perfect way to tell whether you’re going to react to any particular color.  You could have the artist do a few dots of each color in an inconspicuous place, wait a few days and go back to get the tattoo, but just because you don’t react to a small amount of the ink doesn’t mean you won’t end up with problems when a lot of it goes into your skin.  And then there’s always the possibility that the small amount didn’t cause problems itself, but it sensitized you against any further applications.

I had a nice tattoo applied to my ankle at a tattoo show on the Queen Mary.  It was an impulse decision, something I ordinarily advise strongly against.  But it definitely made a mediocre already-existing design look better, so I went for it.  I’m not sorry I did.  But that’s how I learned I’ve got problems with red ink.  Fortunately, as you can see in the photo, there’s not a lot of red ink in the design.  But those small red areas remained swollen, itchy, and intermittently crusty for close to two years after I got the tattoo.  Nothing seemed to help, although Benadryl makes some nice anti-itch lotion that made it quit bothering me for a while.   I put Nivea cream (the thick stuff in the small blue tin) on it regularly, and finally my body and the red ink agreed to co-exist peacefully.  But that reaction has made me somewhat hesitant to go get any more tattoos.

Your own health may also be an issue.  If your immune system isn’t up to par or if you heal slowly (as many diabetics do) it will definitely affect your ink.  Be sure you let your artist know about those conditions before he or she starts work.  It might be that he or she will not want to do the work if the healing will be compromised.  This is something that you and the artist will have to deal with.  No matter how eager you are to go ahead with the tattoo, the artist has to think of the possible consequences for both of you if things go wrong.

Some people worry about infections or HIV.  Going only to a reputable shop will reduce the likelihood of that to the bare minimum.  Tattoo needles are used only once, on only one person.  The rest of the equipment is sterilized at high heat in an autoclave.  The artist wears gloves and everything that touches your skin is disposed of after the work is done.  It’s as close to sterile conditions as human ingenuity can make it.  This is not to say you still can’t get infected after you leave the shop (we live in a germ filled world, after all) but the likelihood of the needles being the source of the contamination is vanishingly small.

I’ve written more extensively on tattoo health issues in the past, and I invite you to check out that series of messages starting here.    I’ve also written about the surprisingly common problems with nickel allergies here, here, and here.

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