Multi.Colored—tattooed people, tattoo dreams

When one season changes into the next, the way we care for our decorations needs to change as well.

Northern Exposure

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?

Southern Exposure

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.

Your turn

Do you have favorite skin care products you’d like to recommend?

photo credit: Maly Krtek
photo credit: fabcom

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I don’t know about anyone else, but I was very surprised to find out that tattoo ink can fade in the sun. I guess I thought that “permanent” really meant “permanent.” But that’s not so.

While the simple passage of time alters tattoo ink (as anyone who’s seen an elderly man with a tattoo he
got decades ago while in the military can attest) sunlight can cause the brigher colors to fade faster than they otherwise would have. Red ink, which seems to be in a class by itself already, fades most noticeably.

I’ve been able to see this in my “swoosh” of seven stars over my collarbone, which is the tattoo that I most often display in public and which has gotten a lot more sun exposure than my others. The red stars have faded more noticeably than the others (although all of them show signs of fading, and I need to go get them touched up one of these days).

Wearing sunscreen over a new tattoo is advice nearly all of us get from the artist along with other aftercare instructions, but those of us who don’t automatically reach for the sunscreen when we’re going to be out in the sun for any length of time may slack off on using it after a while. Even a little bit of sun exposure adds up over time.

Now that summer weather is beginning (it sure is hot here in Los Angeles today!) we all need to start thinking about taking better care of our decorations. Wearing sunscreen is a good idea anyway, and while it won’t completely protect a tattoo from fading (there really isn’t any magic potion that will do that) it can help. And it can also help prevent skin cancer that might really damage your decorations.

Consumer Reports magazine posted a link to a web site called Skin Deep that offers a lot of useful advice about cosmetics in general and sunscreen in particular. That link will land you on a “splash page” that asks you to give them your email address, but if you look closely you will see a link that says “no thanks” and you can click on that to get access to the site without giving them any personal information.

Taking good care of your ink is good for the rest of your body, too.

photo credit: James Jordan

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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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