Comments (0) If you buy something from Gucci’s White Tattoo Heart Collection between November 19 and January 31, Gucci will donate 25% of the price to UNICEF to benefit children affected with HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Check out their web site here.
I hope you'll submit my posts to your favorite social media sites. Just don't "submit" them to your own site pretending to be yours. Thanks!A while back, I talked about the pitfalls of using a language you don’t understand as a basis for a tattoo. Today I found a web site called Char4U, that offers Chinese symbol design services. So if you or someone you know wants a Chinese symbol as a tattoo, this offers one good opportunity to get something that says what you really want it to say.
If your gift recipient isn’t quite ready to go for permanent ink, temporary tattoos can fill the bill. Check out the venerable Archie McPhee Catalog for just a few good examples.
If you’d rather put your ink on your clothing instead of your skin, check out the offerings in the Zazzle catalog.
And, as always, check with your favorite artist to see if he or she offers gift certificates. Nothing like offering a great incentive to join the MultiColored community!
I hope you'll submit my posts to your favorite social media sites. Just don't "submit" them to your own site pretending to be yours. Thanks!With the rising popularity of tattoos and body art, it’s getting easier and easier to find gifts appropriate for tattooed people, or those who just like looking at ink.
There are the books I recommended last year, which I still recomnend. Or a box set of “Miami Ink” (most seasons are available now) or “LA Ink” (looks like Season 1 is out) or the A&E show “Inked.”
If you’re more interested in movies featuring tattoos, check out this great link from Squidoo.
As I mentioned in a reply to the previous message, if someone you know has an iPod, you can find some great skins for it (or for a laptop computer) at Gelaskins.
And here is the Traditions Collection, where you can find just about anything for anyone who loves tattoos.
Those are today’s quick suggestions–more to come! I welcome your comments as well!
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OK, so it’s after Thanksgiving, I can write about holiday gifts now. 
If you missed last year’s series of holiday-gift posts, you can find the beginning here.
I’m going to throw out a few brief suggestions, with more to come in subsequent posts.
What’s your best gift idea for multicolored people?
photo credit: PORKCHOP RULES
Mark your calendars for Sunday, October 12. The History Channel will be rerunning “Ancient Ink.”
Host Craig Reynolds travels around the world to document traditional methods and styles of tattooing, and has himself tattooed in traditional ways by several artists.
The final artist is Zulu, of Zulu Tattoo in Los Angeles. My daughter and I each got two tattoos in Zulu’s shop, although not by the master himself, who is in such great demand (and quite rightly so) that one has to make an appointment months in advance.
Here is the link to information on the History Channel web site.
photo credit: dalbera
When one season changes into the next, the way we care for our decorations needs to change as well.
Here in the northern hemisphere, we are heading into cooler weather (well, here in southern California we aren’t, but our weather is well known to be weird). Does that mean anything different for a tattooed person?
In the colder months, many people’s skin gets dryer. We are not sweating and encouraging our natural skin oils to come to the surface as often. Dry skin makes a tattoo look dusty or faded, and the fine lines may appear less clear. Dry skin feels thinner and may look more wrinkled, if your ink is on a part of the body prone to wrinkling (and it’s not just your face–look closely at the skin on the back of your hands sometime).
The ads for moisturizing products are mostly aimed at women, and mostly aimed at de-wrinkling the face. 
Occasionally you will see an ad for body lotion, but those aren’t nearly as common as the “age defying” ads. I doubt anyone wants to buy one of those overpriced “age defying” products in the itty bitty containers, and slather it all over everything. And of course just because the ads are aimed at women doesn’t mean that men don’t need dry skin treatments during the winter months as well.
Finding a good body lotion is often a matter of trial and error. Any time I go looking for something new, the first thing I do is take the cap off (in the store) and check how the stuff smells. Too strong, or too unpleasant, and back on the shelf it goes. (What can I say, I hate the smell of fake roses!) Manufacturers change their forumulations from time to time, and even if something has been just fine in the past, a sniff test wouldn’t hurt and might save you the time to take the smelly stuff back to the store. I suspect men would be much happier with an unscented lotion.
Are store brands worth buying? I don’t really know. I haven’t done enough comparison shopping. I tend to buy the name brand kind, because I have experience with the products and I already know what I like. With a store brand, it could be manufactured by just about anyone. I personally like the Nivea and Olay products and I have never had a bad experience with any of them.
Apply a good body lotion (also marketed as hand lotion–as far as I can tell, they’re the same stuff with different labels) to your ink at least once a day if your skin tends to get dry or flaky. Your ink will look better, even if it’s not out on display as much as it is in warmer weather. And yes, men, this means you too. Nivea makes a line of products especially for men, if you don’t want to be caught with a bottle of Jergens in your bathroom.
Buy small sizes. It may cost less per ounce to get the biggest one, but skin care products do not last forever. Check the expiration date and be sure you toss the container at the appropriate time. Expired products might work, but why take chances with your skin?
In the southern hemisphere, of course, you’re headed into summer. In warm weather you sweat more, your skin is oilier, and you need to bathe more frequently. Exposed areas of skin should be covered with a good sunscreen.
Buying a sunscreen is also a matter of personal preference. It comes in lotion, gel, spray-on and stick form. Unfortunately, most sunscreens seem to be fairly strongly scented, so the sniff test in the store is essential. Buying a smaller size is not so essential with sunscreen, because you should be using it pretty lavishly to make sure you’re covered, and reapplying it every couple of hours if you’re going to be out in the sun a long time. But sunscreen, like any other skin care product, doesn’t last forever. In our household it’s a constant battle between my husband’s attitude of “If we still have the bottle, the stuff is still good” and my “If it doesn’t have an expiration date on it somewhere and we didn’t buy it this year, out it goes.”
Sunscreen is another product that is available in name brand and store brand, and once again I have no real experience with store brands. I’m sure that if the sunscreen contains the proper chemicals and smells OK, it’d be worth a try if it saves you money. But try a small size first, just in case.
Try to use soap or bath gel that cleans your skin without drying it out too much. If your skin oils are depleted, the skin will just make more to replenish what was lost. If your skin tends to break out, the natural impulse is to scrub away all that oil with vigor, but that might not be the best course of action. Your skin is something that doesn’t need to be squeaky clean!
If you apply a moisturizer to your skin, do it with a lighter hand. A small amount usually goes a long way, and since your skin is producing more oil in response to the warmer air, you won’t need as much lotion to make sure your skin is soft and your ink is bright.
Do you have favorite skin care products you’d like to recommend?
photo credit: Maly Krtek
photo credit: fabcom
I’m a firm believer in the power of the printed word. Of course, I have been an avid reader for about 55 years now, so I have had plenty of practice. To me, the best way to get educated on just about anything is to read, read, read! (See my series of posts called Ten Ways to Take a Stand Against Ignorance for a more complete view of my feelings on the subject.)
Before I got my first tattoo, I scoured the local public libraries and Amazon for books that might help me 
understand what I was getting into. (I was not much of an internet browser at that point and thus missed out on a bajillon highly informative web sites, something I’ve done my best to remedy in the years since.) The best book I found, pre-first-tattoo, was The Total Tattoo Book by Amy Krakow. Once I’d read that, I had a much better idea of what to expect, and it remains a valuable reference.
Last year, I found Ink: The Not-Just-Skin-Deep Guide to Getting a Tattoo, by Terisa Green, Ph.D. If ever a book lived up to its title, this one’s the one. The author covers the whole tattoo 
experience, from planning through aftercare, and offers an incredible wealth of useful tips, history, etiquette suggestions and tattoo trivia. I read the book from cover to cover in an afternoon (I’m a fast reader) and then went back through it a couple more times (I’m an avid re-reader, too). The only criticisms I have of the book is that it has no index and no table of contents, either or both of which would have made it easier to use for reference. I provided my own homebrew solution by putting Post-Itâ„¢ flags on pages of special interest.
If you’d like more information on either essential book, you can click on the cover images I’ve posted here. Knowledge is power.
Thanks, everyone, for waiting out the technical difficulties over the past few days. I should have everything back on schedule in very short order.
I sometimes get asked how much my tattoos cost. Since they were all done several years ago, the prices I paid then won’t
really be applicable now, but in any case I always say they were worth every penny.
Let’s face it, folks: The best tattoo artists are not going to give their art away. They’ve spent years perfecting their craft, and their talents ought to be appreciated in more than just eyeball time. If you have an artist in mind, and you can’t afford their current rates, don’t try to haggle. It’s insulting to the artist and will likely result in your getting shown the door, permanently. If you don’t have the money now, then it’s time to start saving your pennies. You’re going to be decorating your body with something you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life. Do you want to spend the rest of your life advertising just how cheap you were? Do you want to settle for a second-rate (or worse) tattoo just because the artist’s prices were low? Sure, many people are so thrilled by the idea of getting a tattoo that they want to get it done as fast as possible, but there’s where the old “Act in haste, repent at leisure” saying comes into play in full force.
Most reputable artists will be happy to give you an estimate, based on their hourly rate and the complexity of the design you want. Try to find out when the shop is least busy, and stop by then to discuss your artwork. If you just want to pick some flash off the wall or get a cartoon character on your butt, it probably won’t take more than an hour of the artist’s time (perhaps even less) and you’ll pay accordingly. Your own custom design would be the next step up the ladder, and the artist can give you an idea of how long it will take to apply and how much it is likely to cost. But if you want a custom design by the artist, you’re going to be paying for his or her talent, his or her time to create the design, your time with the artist approving or modifying the design, and then the hourly cost for the actual ink.
And no matter how much that costs, it will be a bargain. You’re getting a precious jewel that will last a lifetime.
So if you want to be a classy, artistic, well-decorated multicolored person, don’t be cheap.
I wish I had good, professional photographs of myself, showing my tattoos to their best advantage. I don’t think I’m particularly photogenic, but I’d like to have a record of my ink, if only so my kids can show their kids (if they ever have kids, that is) what a multicolored nut their Granny was.
So, as my final holiday-gift suggestion–a session with a good photographer, and at least one good print. Our ink is art, and deserves to be treated as such. A photographer can make a record of what we are, and what our multicolored bodies say about ourselves, to preserve us, in a way, for the ages.
Non-inked people sometimes bring up the issue of “what will that look like after you’ve sagged.” This is another way of saying “Who cares, I know what it looks like now.”
The last post about crystal tattoos got me to thinking about temporary tattoos in general.
Temporary tattoos have a long and glorious history. The art of mehndi has been practiced for thousands of years in India, adjacent countries and the Middle East. Henna paste is applied to the skin in elaborate patterns, allowed to dry, and then washed off, leaving stains on the skin which slowly fade over time. Creating original designs is a true art form, but nowadays we can apply our own henna designs with a bit of patience and a steady hand.
Other ancient people painted their skin with woad, red ochre, and other natural colors to make semi-permanent or truly temporary body art. While woad-it-yourself kits aren’t exactly a hot seller these days, you can buy body paint like TempTu (with or without patterns for tattoo designs) and paint yourself any color you like–at least to the capacity of the small jars in the kit. Amazon lists all kinds of interesting possibilities if you do a search with the term “body paint.”
When I was a kid, temporary tattoos were of the lick-and-stick comic-character variety. As you can imagine, the image quality produced by a thin sheet of tissue paper moistened with saliva and plastered on your arm was… um, not exactly stellar. Nowadays, we have a lot more choices. I knew that tattoos had finally made the mainstream when I discovered a store selling temporary tattoos right across from the ferris wheel in Disneyland California Adventure.
You can also buy software to design your own tattoos (and special paper to print your designs on). These seem mostly aimed at kids, but there’s nothing to say you can’t dump the Hot Wheels motifs and make your own.
Making a temporary tattoo is a great way to try out the size, color, and placement of ink you’re considering making permanent. I’m seriously considering having a bracelet done, and I want to make sure that’s what I really want before I take the plunge.
There’s still time to do a lot of exploring and a lot of painting!
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