Tattoo Talk Thursdays: ALL ABOUT MY STOMACH TATTOO!

Hey, guys!
Welcome back to another instalment of Tattoo Talk Thursdays.

This week, I'm going to talk about my stomach tattoo! 

It was something I never thought I'd do, but here we are a little over 2 years later

with two other additions to it. I actually did the lower half of my stomach a day before I did the upper middle part, so we'll start with the lower part!

MAGDEBURG 

My favourite city ever, besides London. I felt so at home there and it was home for a while. I fit there and wrote some pretty amazing shit while I was living there.  It needed to go in my skin forever. I never wanted to forget what that city gave to me. I didn't want the tattoo to wrap around any part of my body nor did I want it on my back, so stomach was a great option. I always had loved Kat Von D's Hollywood tattoo on her lower stomach, so I decided to take that idea and make it my own. I wanted the lettering to be a bit squiggly to look like it had actually been written in lipstick. I didn't want a sleek little lippy tube either, I wanted something 20s-chunky and suave, so I sketched out a little tube with a bow and a heart with a crystallised background to it. 

I added the Magdeburg skyline above it, just to add something a little more special, as the skyline has always captivated me. Magdeburg Dom will always be special and hold a magic for me.  I wanted it to arch over the lettering, just to complete the piece. I got the lettering and the lippy done first, then added the skyline on a day later. To be honest, it wasn't really bad. It was more or less painless. It was nothing like I thought it would be. It took about an hour and a half to do the lettering and that lippy. I think the hardest part of getting my lower stomach tattoo, was having to have my stomach exposed to someone...someone I knew kinda made it worst. I was so anxious the entire time.
When we added the skyline, another artist friend of mine did it, as my mate who'd started it wasn't able to finish it. He didn't go as deep or as dark as he probably should have. 

I need to get the Skyline touched up sometime...I'll probably have one of my mates do it when I have some free time and they do too. I'm thinking Florida maybe... (You guys can come hang out and see me there at Playlist Live May 2017!) I've decided to add shading to the skyline to make it look more complete as well as darken it. Eventually, the London skyline that I want to cover my right hip will  connect into the Magdeburg one and completely wrap around my side and front. I'm not sure if I'll do a skyline on the left side, as I already have one tattoo arching on my hip there.  Only time will tell...

Three days later, I was back under the needed to complete the rest of my stomach piece. I'm an avid Fall Out Boy fan and their music shaped a lot of my youth. I'd gotten to see them live in 2007 I think it was and my mind was blown. I wanted to do something with the song that stuck with me forever, "Sugar, We're Goin' Down." The dear-man story line in the music video always made me laugh and made things seem less dark. I love animal tattoos with roses, so I added some roses onto the base of the deer head and chest...it still didn't look right whilst I was sketching it, so I added some filigree around the deer and had the roses blooming out from behind the filigree. 

Outline of the Sugar We're Goin' Down Deer! 

Finished! Right before we bandaged the motherfucker I took

this quick snap!

He did the outline of the entire tattoo, took a five-minute break so I could take a photo and then we dove right into adding shading, then colour. The entire tattoo took 6.5 hours to do the entire tattoo. I didn't want to leave with an unfinished piece, so I pushed through it. The pain on the base of my ribs and upper stomach was unline anything I'd felt before in tattooing. I'd had my chest and collarbones tattooed before, but it was nothing like that. It was sharp, and raw pain. Each time he went into shade a part he'd stopped working on, a fresh wave of pain would hit me.  After he finished, washing me down after was just the most amazing feeling. I was sore, but I felt completed in a lot of ways. I'd been through worse pain before...emotional pain. But this tattoo was a step in the right direction. It was about happy and warm remembrances of childhood and also taking the encouragement and comfort the songs provided me with into a new chapter in my life. 

HEALING
Healing the two massive tattoos wasn't that hard. I was just sore for a while. I'd done a lot to my body in just four days. Everything was new. I washed each with anti-bacterial soap and in the shower after the first wash, just used an unscented bar soap. I lotioned the tattoos with Nivea or Cocoa Butter-those are the things that I like the most for healing tattoos. After the first few days of soreness, came the peeling and I was going right mental with them.