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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, June 3, 2008 11:12 am

I don’t recommend products here unless I’ve tried ‘em myself, so that limits the number of endorsements considerably.

I had heard about a company called Lush from a good friend who has been ecstatically using their products for quite a while now. She has without a doubt the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen–long, thick, curly and shining. She credits Lush’s shampoo for a lot of that.

When Ifirst heard about the company, it sounded great, but there were no stores within a convenient travel distance of where I live. The web site does a great job of describing the products, but I wanted to see them for myself before I took the plunge.

My daughter got ahead of me, though, and bought me some shampoo, soap, and hand and foot cream for Mother’s Day (and what a glorious present that was, too!) And now I can say that it’s well worth the effort to seek out a Lush store and check out what they’ve got.

I think their Helping Hands cream would do fine for tattoo aftercare. It’s not greasy, absorbs quickly and leaves a very light protective film on your skin. Lush is an international company (the link above is to the main page, where you can tell the web site where you live). It’s worth seeking out one of their stores, though, if there is one within a reasonable distance, because the staff there knows their products thoroughly and will be happy to give you a sample of anything in the store to try before you buy.

Have you tried Lush? What did you think of it?
photo credit: incurable_hippie

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By infmom, June 23, 2007 11:10 am

OK, so now you’ve chosen your design, chosen your artist, gone through with the tattoo process and you’re home again and enough time has passed that you can peel off the bandage, wash your new ink and admire it.

Now what?

Well, as with any healing skin wound, it’s going to weep. It’s going to itch. And later on, it’s going to peel. All of which are good reasons to grit your teeth and vow to keep your cotton-pickin’ hands OFF it. Do not scratch, rub, or try to peel yourself. What it boils down to is that you’re going to have to leave that new ink strictly alone if you want it to last.

The problem is that a new tattoo (again, like any other skin wound) is going to form a scab of sorts. (Show me one person who survived childhood without ever wanting to pick off a scab.) Scabs, being far less flexible than the underlying skin, tend to pull at their borders and break in the middle. That may lead to further scab formation. The scabs that form are likely to be colored the same as the underlying ink and it’s all the more tempting to pick at them to get rid of them once and for all.

In a word: DON’T.

If you pick those scabs off before they fall off naturally, you run the very real risk of pulling the ink off with them. Your tattoo will end up with holes in it and will look terrible. Why go to all the trouble and expense to get inked if you’re going to pick the thing to pieces afterwards? Grit your teeth. Keep your mitts off.

Keep using whatever aftercare product you chose. They will usually keep the scabs reasonably soft and less irritating. Wash the area gently with warm water at least once a day and gently pat it dry. You could follow that up with something like Bactine Hurt-Free Antiseptic Wash, which kills germs and also contains a mild topical anaesthetic that may dull the itch and prickle of healing skin. Once that’s dry, reapply your chosen aftercare product with a gentle hand.

The length of time it takes a new tattoo to heal depends entirely on the individual. Some people have smooth, irritation-free skin in a week. For some people the process takes longer, sometimes much longer. And in some cases, which I’ll address more fully in a future post, the skin may never properly heal at all.

Stay out of the sun while your skin is healing, and if your new tattoo is someplace that is normally visible when you’re outside, be sure to apply sunscreen forever after lest the sun fade the ink. (Most ink does fade and sometimes change color over time, which I’ll also talk about in more detail later on.)

The healing process is like getting the tattoo in the first place–endure a little discomfort now, enjoy your ink for a lifetime afterwards.

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By infmom, June 10, 2007 6:29 pm

So, should you use any of the specialized products designed for tattoo aftercare? (Black Cat and Tattoo Goo are two well-known brands.)

On the plus side, those were designed by people who really know about tattoo aftercare, and they contain all-natural ingredients and are far less likely to cause any kind of skin problems. They are not greasy, and easy to apply to the skin. They have a pleasant scent and come in smaller containers that hold more than enough to care for one tattoo while it’s healing. You can find both salve for immediately-after care, and lotion for long-term application. You can buy the products from many tattoo artists so you can just pick up what you need before you leave the shop.

On the minus side, those products aren’t drugstore items and they are a little on the expensive side compared to more readily available products. Since they are made from fragrant herbs (such as lavender) the scent is noticeable and everyone’s preferences in scents are different so there’s no guarantee that any one individual will like the smell. (For the record, I happen to think they smell pleasant and have used both products with no problems.) The salves are not readily absorbed into the skin so it might get on your clothing (although it doesn’t stain).

But here’s a hint for anyone who wants to try those specialized products: The ingredients in Burt’s Bees Hand Salve are almost identical, and that product can be found in almost any drugstore these days. Burt’s Bees is also all-natural, smells pleasant and is easy to apply. So if you’re not sure you want to shell out for special tattoo aftercare, it might well be worth buying a tin of Burt’s Bees. I’ve also used that and it worked great on my ankle tattoo.

So in the end what you try is up to you. It helps if you do your research ahead of time so you’re not standing in line at the drugstore with your new tattoo weeping into its covering while you sniff bottles of this and that and try to figure out what chemicals are what.

The more you do before you sit in the chair, the happier you’ll be afterwards!

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By infmom, May 21, 2007 12:49 pm

The one thing everyone agrees on is that you should protect your newly tattooed skin while it heals. The skin itself is going to get dry and flaky and the epidermis is going to peel off after the new skin forms underneath. It’s rather like what happens when you get a sunburn that peels.

So you need to keep the healing epidermis moisturized so that your new ink doesn’t peel off along with the skin. (When the skin peels off it may look like the color is going with it, but it’s nothing to be alarmed about.)

What to use to keep the skin moist is a matter of debate. Some artists suggest using some kind of antibacterial ointment. However, most of those are petroleum based and will not only keep your skin from breathing, but might well contribute to future sensitivities. In general, one should avoid antibacterials–you run the risk of irritating your skin with the chemicals, plus any bacteria on your skin may develop resistance to the medication and cause way more trouble in the future. If you’re worried about germs, washing gently with regular soap and water should do the job. Just don’t scrub your skin–in fact, don’t even use a washcloth, just your hand. Rinse it off under gently running warm water and pat (don’t rub) dry with a clean towel. Put the towel in the wash afterwards, because it may well have ink on it.

Some artists advise using a specific brand of lotion on your skin. If the artist’s clients have had good luck with that brand, there’s generally no harm in using it, but be aware that lotions contain all kinds of possibly-sensitizing ingredients as well. And even a brand that you’ve used successfully on your hands before (for regular dry skin) might cause a different reaction when put on injured skin because more of it would be absorbed into the bloodstream. However, the tattoo artists who recommend a particular brand generally have a lot of client experience to base their recommendations on, so that brand should generally be safe.

And then there are the proprietary after-tattoo products like Black Cat and Tattoo Goo. I’ll talk a bit more about those in the next installment.

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By infmom, April 29, 2007 12:47 pm

There’s no part of the whole tattoo experience that contains more contradictory advice than aftercare. What exactly does the newly tattooed person have to do to take care of the tattoo while it’s healing?

The artist will put something on your skin to cover up the new ink when it’s finished. This is a good thing, because what you have is essentially an open wound. It may or may not actually bleed, but it will weep, and it needs to be kept moist and protected while the healing process begins.

As I wrote previously, though, the common practice of slapping a piece of plastic wrap on a new tattoo is a really, really bad idea. Here is a link to an article on about.com that lays out the reasons why. If you see the artist starting to peel off a length of plastic wrap, ask him or her to put on a bandage instead.

Each artist seems to have his or her own preference for how long the bandage should stay on. Some say, just take it off when you get home and shower and leave the bandage off after that. Some say leave it on for six to eight hours. Some say overnight. My own experience leads me to advise leaving the bandage on overnight, for the simple reason that you don’t want your new ink sticking to your bed or whatever it is you sleep in. Time enough to peel it off the next morning. Then take a shower and carefully wash the area to remove any accumulated fluids. If the bandage sticks to your skin, as it likely will, just wet a washcloth with comfortably warm water and use that to saturate the bandage till it can be peeled off.

And then what? Leave the ink to dry? Put antibacterial ointment on your skin? Use hand lotion? Use a proprietary after-tattoo product? Nobody seems to agree. Some people say “Never use petroleum based products on your skin” and then turn right around and tell you to use something like A&D, which is… um, medicated Vaseline. Some people say “Don’t use anything that might irritate the skin” and then say to use some brand or other of hand or body lotion, the ingredients list of which contains all kinds of chemicals that can irritate skin. Some advise the use of fairly expensive proprietary after-tattoo products, which they have on sale at the shop.

Given the mass amount of conflicting advice out there, what’s the best course? Do whatever your artist tells you to do and hope for the best? Established tattoo artists have plenty of experience with these things, but it’s your skin that’s going to be covered with this stuff, so shouldn’t you do at least a little research before you get your ink?

I’ll cover the various options in the next couple posts.

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