Now You Are Tattooed

Now You Are Tattooed

♦    Taking care of the fresh tattoo

♦    Keeping the tattoo looking good

♦    Next tattoo

♦    Covering the old tattoos

♦    Laser removal

It feels good to get out of the chair or off the massage table after the tattooist says that you are finished. There is noth­ing like the feeling of being done with getting a tattoo. Now you can show all your friends and maybe your parents. You are now “one of those people” who has a tattoo and there is no going back.

The process isn’t over yet, though. Now you need to care for the tattoo. As you will see, there are a           few steps to the

aftercare that you will need to follow. There   are   also a few

steps to ensure that your tattoo will look good for years to come.

Usually after the first tattoo, the next idea will start floating around in your thoughts ... so you may need to make another trip to the tattoo shop. Tattoos are addictive. In this chapter we will go over what you need to do to take care of your tattoo and the different methods of changing your tattoo or having it removed.

Aftercare

The tattoo is done and the job of the tattooist is complete. Now it is your turn to take care of the tattoo. It is extremely important that you take good care of a healing tattoo. How you care for the tattoo will affect how the tattoo looks for the rest of your life. Proper care of a tattoo will ensure that the tattoo has bright colors and dark blacks.

Every tattoo shop will tell you a different way to take care of a tattoo. Each method is basically the same. Some people disagree on what to use, what not to use, or what is best to put on the tattoo. What matters is that the tattoo heals up without any reac­tions. Let’s take a look at the basic method of taking care of a fresh tattoo.

What to Do

Once completed, the tattooist will place a bandage over the tattoo. This is to protect it from dirt and other foreign objects. It also keeps your clothes or anything else from rubbing against your sensitive tattoo. You will want to keep the bandage on for at least two hours. Many tattooists suggest that you keep the bandage on overnight so the tattoo won’t stick to your sheets or pajamas. Some of the ink will seep out of your skin during the first 12 hours and stain whatever you are wearing or sleeping on.

If you shower before going to bed, wash the tattoo and then cau­tiously tape a piece of plastic wrap over the tattoo. Plastic wrap makes a great protective cover for tattoos. Tattoos on some parts of the body, such as the chest, can be hard to keep bandages on, as they will fall off with your body movements. You can either retape the bandage on or just take it off and go to the next step.

After the bandage has come off, you will need to clean your tattoo. There will be some tattoo color slime that has oozed out of your skin along with a little blood. This is normal. Wash the tattoo gently with soap and water. Most of the time it is just easier to take a shower. Many tattoos are on body parts that make washing in a sink very awkward.

There is a great technique that can really help the healing of your tattoo. While you are washing your tattoo, you will notice that it feels like a sunburn and is very sensitive to warm water.

Let the warm water run over your fresh tattoo until the tattoo gets used to the temperature of the water. Once the water doesn’t burn, turn up the temperature just a little so it irritates the tattoo again. Repeat this until the temperature of the water is just a little hotter than what you would consider a hot shower. This process will open the pores in the skin of your tattoo and wash out all of the dirt and excess ink. It will also get rid of a lot of the irrita­tion your skin will have from getting tattooed. You may find that doing this once after you get tattooed will help your tattoo heal faster and better.

After you wash your tattoo for the first time, don’t moisturize it with anything. Let it dry. Then you may want to cover the tattoo

with a piece of plastic wrap. It isn’t necessary to do so, but it will keep the tattoo from getting irritated by anything that could rub up against it like your clothes or a family pet. You will want to change the plastic wrap once or twice throughout the day. That is up to your discretion. Wrap your tattoo with plastic wrap before going to bed on the next night. It will again keep the tattoo from sticking to your sheets.

On the following night, a full 24 hours after you have been tat­tooed, you will want to wash the tattoo again, just with soap and warm water. After the tattoo has dried, you must moisturize the tattoo with one of the following products before rewrapping it with plastic wrap:

♦    A&D Ointment

♦    Bacitracin (Neosporin will work, but due to the many chem­icals in it, it may not react well)

♦    Tattoo Goo or other tattoo-company treatments (these are usually sold in tattoo shops and are great for tattoos but will cost at least double what it costs to buy Bacitracin)

♦    Bepanthen (found in Europe and works really well)

♦    Basic perfume-free skin moisturizer (but nothing with aloe or any chemical additives) and topical vitamins (such as vita­min E or D)

The point of moisturizing the tattoo is to keep it from drying out, which would make it hard for your skin to heal. You just want to moisturize the tattoo as if you were moisturizing your hands.

Don’t leave globs of moisturizer on your fingers; rub it in so there is no excess. Too much ointment on your new tattoo will draw the ink out of your skin and the

tattoo won’t heal as bright or as dark as it should. Also, after the excess ointment draws the ink out of your skin, it will dry into a thick scab. If the thick scab is pulled off prematurely, it will leave a blank spot in your tattoo, which will then need a touch-up. So remember to wipe off the excess ointment, or it will ruin your tattoo.

You will need to moisturize your tattoo with one of the various products three or four times a day for four or five days. The num­ber of times a day depends on you. If the tattoo feels dry, then moisturize it. Usually the various products like A&D ointment are used until the scabs have flaked off. After that, just use a regular skin moisturizer for at least a week.

Due to many people having an allergic reaction to petroleum- based products such as A&D ointment, Bacitracin, and the various tattoo-company products (read the labels for the ingredients) many tattooists will suggest using a basic skin moisturizer that doesn’t have any perfume

or aloe, which is a natural astringent, throughout the whole process. All that other stuff works well, but all you really need is to use basic moisturizer for two or three weeks.

scarring, and as we saw before, you can pick holes and ruin your tattoo.

Do not go swimming. If your tattoo becomes too moist, from too much ointment or being submerged in water for too long, ink will come out of your skin. Chlorinated water found in pools will react badly with your tattoo. It can cause irritation and then create excess scabbing.

Do not get direct sunlight on your tattoo. As we have seen, the sun will mess up your tattoo. If you work outdoors, wear some­thing that will cover your new tattoo. If the tattoo is on an arm, you can cut the end off of a clean sock and slide that over your tattoo. The beach is a no-no, as there isn’t usually any cover from the sun and you can’t go swimming with the new tattoo anyway. To be safe, you will want to keep a new tattoo out of the sun for three weeks to a month, and you will want to put an SPF 45 sun­block on it. It is usually a better idea to get tattooed in the fall or winter so you don’t have to worry about a missed opportunity to go to the beach.

a scab off prematurely and cause a holiday in the tattoo. You could just tear the skin, as it is very thin and more delicate than normal while it is healing. You can slap the tattoo, which will cause some relief. The best way to avoid a very itchy tattoo is to moisturize it properly throughout the healing process.

Larger tattoos that take up a lot of skin and are near a joint will take longer to heal if the joint gets too much movement while the tattoo is trying to heal. You will feel the irritation. It is best to avoid working out for a few days. If you are in some kind of self­defense class like karate, kung fu, or kickboxing, you may want to avoid getting hit near the area of the tattoo. You also may want to take it easy on the calisthenics. Many construction workers and mechanics will get tattooed on a Friday evening so they have the whole weekend to heal. It’s best to take it easy for a few a days to let your tattoo heal properly.

Mealing Time

All tattoos heal at different rates. Tattoos on parts of the body that have a lot of movement like the wrist or elbow may take lon­ger to heal. Your health will determine the healing time as well. Some tattooists have a heavier hand, which means they use more pressure and run their machines harder so their tattoos can some­times take longer to heal, especially if the tattoos are not properly taken care of.

Usually after two or three days, the tattoo will begin to scab or peel. It takes anywhere from a few days to a week for this to finish. A scab can be stubborn and stay on for over three weeks, but that is usually in an area that takes longer to heal.

After the scabs have flaked away, your skin will appear shiny. This is because it is still healing. The new skin of the tattoo will feel softer, thinner, and more delicate during this time. It will be that way for about a month. If you need to have a touch-up or want to add on to your tattoo or change something in the design, you will have to wait well over a month before the skin is ready to be tattooed again. When the tattoo looks like it is 100 percent part of your skin, then you can have it worked on again. If you don’t

wait, you could cause scarring, and the new ink may not stay in. If that happens, the tattoo will take even longer to heal, and you will have to get the new tattoo work done again, which would then take much longer than simply waiting those initial few weeks.

Skin and Body Reactions

You will notice that your body will react to getting tattooed. As we know, everyone reacts differently, but here are a few basic reac­tions that you may or may not notice. The area under and around the tattoo will bruise, so you will see a slight brown tinting under and around your tattoo while it is healing. Sometimes the bruise will go beyond the tattooed area like a halo. The area that has been tattooed will swell and be sore as if something hit you force­fully. If you have been tattooed on or near a joint, that joint may become sore when you move it.

Again, the tattooed skin will feel like a sunburn, and will be very sensitive to the touch. Your skin will feel very taut and may not allow you to stretch; it may feel like your skin will tear. You also may have a reaction to the ink, which we went over in Chapter 4. A bad reaction is very rare so you don’t need to worry about that too much. If you have a bad reaction, get in touch with your tat- tooist so they can tell you how to take care of it or go see your doctor.

Getting large amounts of skin tattooed at once can lower your immune system, which can lead to you coming down with a cold or flu. This usually only happens if you get over eight hours of work done at once. Some people travel very far to get tattooed by a specific person. They will often get tattooed for two days in a row, for many hours at a time. This can really lower your immune system. If you are going to do this, remember to eat healthfully and bring lots of vitamins.

The Effects of the Sun

The sun’s ultraviolet rays will age your tattoo as well as give you skin cancer if you aren’t careful. The UV rays are very harmful

to a new tattoo. The skin of a new tattoo is trying to heal and get used to all the ink. It doesn’t have all of its usual defenses to pro­tect you from the sun.

If you expose your tattoo to the sun, it will heal poorly. First the skin will burn, then the tattoo will start to look pale, and a white coat of dead skin will form. The tattoo will feel thick and raised as the color seems to recede and fade. The tattoo will then scab thickly and crack, and take much longer to heal. Your tattoo will lose a lot of its color and contrast, and most likely need to be done over. In other words, you will want to keep your tattoo out of the sun. It’s not a pretty sight.

Tattoos Age in the Sun

You have seen that the sun will ruin your tattoo. Have you ever noticed how old signs left in the sun are faded as if they have been bleached? Ultraviolet rays fade pigment whether it’s on a piece of wood or in your skin. Have you ever noticed that art museums with paintings have no open windows where the sun can directly shine in? The sun would destroy millions of dollars’ worth of artwork. You won’t want your artwork destroyed, either, so use a good, strong sunblock when going out in the sun.

Tanning Beds

If you go to tanning salons often, you might as well skip getting any form of serious tattooing. You will ruin the tattoo quickly. Tanning beds are as unhealthy as smoking and fast food, but it is your life. If you don’t mind having a faded tattoo or are willing to have it done over every five years to keep it looking decent, go for it. You can always put some sunblock on the tattoo before you tan.

Keeping Your Tattoo Healthy

Keeping your tattoo healthy is easy. If you are a person who gen­erally takes good care of your skin, you won’t have any problems taking care of your tattoo. If you don’t pay much attention to your

skin’s health, that’s okay, but just pay attention to the tattoo. Keep your tattoo moist by rubbing moisturizer on it daily. If you are in a dry climate or are prone to dry skin, you will want to moisturize at least twice a day. Use a very strong sunblock, such as SPF 45 or stronger, when you are in the sun. Eat healthfully, too. The healthier you are, the healthier your tattoos will be.

Making the Next Appointment

When you are getting large tattoos, you will need a few appoint­ments. Tattooists who are good at planning ahead will set you up with as many appointments as they feel they will need to finish the tattoo. This is good for you. Some tattooists are very booked up with appointments, and you may have to wait weeks, months, or even a year until your next appointment. If you can get the appointments in advance, you won’t have to wait and you can com­plete your tattoo as quickly as possible.

You may need to wait until the tattoo is healed before continuing, which may take more than a month. Many people will just work on different sections of the tattoo so that you can get tattooed weekly. Usually one week for an outline to heal is long enough to continue with the shading.

Some customers know that they will want to get another tattoo right after they get their first one. If this happens to you, you can make your next appointment before you walk out the door. Many tattooists take this as a compliment, showing that you particularly liked their work.

Spreading the Word

If you have followed the guidance of this book and really made the right choices, chances are you should be pretty happy with your new tattoo. Now you can help guide people who don’t know where to go for a tattoo. Don’t be afraid to show your tattoo in public. Wear clothing that will show off your new tattoo if you can. You will meet many other tattoo enthusiasts and you can share your tattoo experiences with each other.

Remember to grab some business cards from your tattooist or tat­too shop. If you keep them in your wallet or in your purse, you can hand them out when someone asks you about your tattoos. Many shops have free stickers, too. Stick them around town or on your car. Give them to friends. Buy one of your tattoo shop’s t-shirts or sweat shirts—these are shirts not many people will have, so you will have something fairly original to wear in public.

The Internet is a great place to brag about your tattoo. You can put a photo of your tattoo on MySpace or another social website. There are hundreds of tattoo chat rooms you can visit if you want to share your experience. You may want to talk about your tattoo on your blog, as getting it was a new experience that has physically changed you. Your tattooist will appreciate your enthusiasm and definitely appreciate all the new business you bring him.

Touch-Ups

Sometimes things happen and a tattoo needs a touch-up. It’s a normal part of tattooing that even the most experienced tattooist will need to do. As we have seen, your tattoo must be fully healed

in order for it to be tattooed again. Usually a month will do if you take really good care of it, but sometimes it is a few weeks longer.

Touch-ups are usually free as long as the tattoo looks like you have been taking care of it. If you let it roast in the sun, let it dry out, pick the scabs, or put way too much ointment on it, a tattooist will be able to tell. She may tell you that you need to pay to have it fixed, as it is not her fault the tattoo was not taken care of.

It is the responsibility of the tattooist who did the tattoo to do the touch-up, not the shop’s responsibility. If you go to someone else, he will charge you or he may not do it—some tattooists consider it taboo for a tattooist to work on someone else’s tattoo. Many times a shop will do the touch-up if the tattooist is out of town. Or they may make an appointment with the tattooist for you to have it touched up. If you know you are going to get another tattoo by the same tattooist, you may want to wait for a touch-up until then. It is easier to get two birds with one stone. Tattooists and tattoo shops usually care about their reputation and will want the tattoo to be as perfect as possible.

Getting Rid of That Old Tattoo

Many people find that they want to get rid of their old tattoos. There are many reasons for wanting to get rid of old designs. Lots of people make immature decisions when they are young and find the tattoo embarrassing when they get older. A weed leaf may be cool when you are 18 but hard to show your future mother-in-law. Having an ex-lover’s name can really make for an interesting time with your new significant other.

Some people get very poorly done tattoos that look like they were done in jail by a hack—or were actually done in jail by a hack. These tattoos are often embarrassing and look horrible, and they will need changing. Or the person may feel the style is outdated or he just doesn’t like the style he chose anymore, and so he wants to have a new style placed over the old one. Smaller tattoos often end up looking too small, so they can either be added onto or covered with something larger that fits the body much better. Let’s look at the different options to changing old and unwanted tattoos.

Covering It Up

Getting an old tattoo covered up with a new one is becoming more and more popular. Every tattooist has to learn how to do cover ups. Doing a good cover up is not easy. On many cover-ups you can still see a little hint of the old tattoo behind the new one. That is normal. Some cover-ups are over very dark or heavily scarred tattoos. There is nothing that can be done for the texture of the scarring in the old tattoo but the old tattoo design can be made illegible.

A cover-up is an entirely different tattoo than a tattoo on blank skin. Some concepts work in covering up tattoos, but most con­cepts don’t work when covering tattoos. There are a few important things you should know if you want to get a good cover-up so that the new tattoo looks like a good tattoo and not like a cover-up.

♦   The new tattoo design must be at least three or four times the size of your old tattoo.

♦   The new tattoo will need to use plenty of black shading, especially if the old tattoo is really dark.

♦   The new tattoo design must be a solid design with lots of coverage. You won’t be able to have negative spaces in the tattoo, so typical tribal designs will not work.

♦   Flash designs usually don’t work well for larger cover-ups, but there are a few exceptions. Usually a design will have to be custom-drawn to ensure the old tattoo is covered up completely.

♦   Warm colors like red, yellow, and orange don’t work well for covering tattoos. Cool colors like blue, green, and purple are needed to cover old tattoos.

♦   It may take a second or third layer of tattooing to completely cover your old tattoo if it is really dark. Therefore, you need to have patience when getting this done.

Choosing an idea for your cover-up design can be difficult. Not all ideas will work due to all the limitations of getting a cover-up.

Many times a cover-up will simply camouflage the old tattoo.

This is easier to do with tattoos that have a lot of detail. Any animal or mythological beast that has scales or feathers is a good

choice for a cover-up. Asian-style dragons, koi fish, or any kind of fish that can be darkly shaded will work well. Also, birds such as ravens or eagles will make for good cover-ups. As we saw before, biomechanical tat­toos can have a lot of detail and are good for cover-ups.

A design that has a dark robe like a Grimm Reaper will be able to cover most other designs. You could replace the Grimm Reaper with a woman in a cloak, and use her hair to help with the cover- up. Seventeenth-century French ornamental design can work well if it is put together correctly. Dark floral designs that have a lot of dark leaves are good, and may work if you need a name in a ban­ner covered. Most of the time you will need to cover the entire tattoo and not just the name.

For background on cover-ups, black atmospheric shading works well. An example of this can be seen in classical Chinese brush painting. There are no rigid lines or rules of how to put it together like in traditional Japanese backgrounds. This gives the tattooist the freedom to place the shading where she needs to, to further cover the old tattoo. It is also faster to accomplish and will hurt less in the end.

When getting a cover-up, you will need a consultation. The tat- tooist will usually make a tracing of the area and the old tattoo so that he will know what it looks like while he draws the new design to cover the old one. Many tattooists will draw on you to get a feel for what needs to be done, and then take a digital picture of that for later reference. Some cover-ups need to be drawn on com­pletely without the use of a stencil. This works well because the design will fit to the body well and you will be able to see how it is done. Every tattooist has his own way of solving cover-ups.

A

Not all cover-ups need to be so elaborate. Older tattoos that have faded to almost nothing after years in the sun or tattoos that have had a turn under the laser machine are easier to cover. Still, you will want to research well who does your cover-up. Cover-up tattoos can be very expensive due to the amount of work and con­centration needed to get them done and done well.

Lasering It Off

The best way to get rid of your old tattoo is to have it removed by laser. Laser removal works by a quick pulse of highly concentrated light that breaks up the tattoo pigment in your skin. The smaller particles of pigment are then taken away by your immune system.

Laser removal is a great way to get rid of a tattoo, but it can leave scarring or a discoloration of your skin. Also, the tattoo may never totally disappear. You may be left with a few light spots of tattoo. Laser treatment is also very painful. It will hurt about four times more than getting the tattoo in the first place. However, the treatment is fast and may only take a few minutes. After the treat­ment is done, the treated skin will be sore and may scab. You will have to wait for the skin to heal before going back for another treatment.

attoos that were done by the inexperienced may take longer to laser. If the tattoo was done poorly, the ink might be on different layers of the dermis, whereas an experienced professional will have the ink inserted on just about the same level. Blue and black

ink are the easiest to remove. Black will absorb all of the different kinds of intense light used to remove tattoos, so the black ink par­ticles will break up more easily. Yellows and greens are harder to break up and may take more treatments.

Laser removal is not cheap. It takes many sessions, which can cost $250 and up, per session, depending on the size of the tattoo. Health insurance usually won’t cover the cost, either, as it is a cosmetic surgery. If you want to get laser removal, do some research when looking for a place to have it done. Some places will have better results than others and be more efficient.

The Least You Need to Know

♦    You will want to keep your tattoo moisturized during the healing process.

♦    It can take up to two weeks for your tattoo to heal, but take over a month for your tattoo to completely heal in order to rework the area.

♦    Use SPF 45 or higher on your tattoo when you go out in the sun.

♦    To get your old tattoo covered with a new one, the new design must be three or four times the size of the older tattoo.

♦    Laser surgery is the best way to remove a tattoo to date, but it is very painful and can be quite expensive.