Virginia's Flowers Forecast Spring

This is a quick one for Monday morning, on the last day of February, with spring looming just around the corner. Here's one of Virginia's tattoos:

Virginia is a long-time reader and fan of Tattoosday who I have met on anumber of occasions. This is the first piece she has shared with us.

This floral tattoo is at the top of her right shoulder and was done by Craig Rodriguez at Hand of Glory in Brooklyn.

She explains further, "We are all hoping for an early spring. Daffodils and forget-me-nots. It is a memorial tattoo. I always bring yellow flowers to the cemetery when I honor my family members."

Work from Hand of Glory has appeared previously here on Tattoosday. A piece of Craig's was featured here.

Amen to the early spring! Thanks to Virginia for sharing this lovely tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

The Tattoosday Product Review: Troll Skin Aftercare

Two weeks ago, Americans celebrated Thanksgiving in a variety of ways. Most had large dinners with families, many went on a televised football binge, and others watched the Macy*s parade and/or the Philadelphia dog show on NBC. I, of course, nursed my new Thanksgiving tattoo.

For those of you just tuning in, late November found me being thankful for the good people at SkinActives, for sponsoring a little contest we had here to choose which of these tattoos that I should get inked to commemorate the holiday (and Hand of Glory’s cool Thanksgiving Special).

Brian Faulk at Hand of Glory, Helping Me Celebrate Thanksgiving Permanently

Why would a skin care company sponsor such an endeavor? Well, they wanted me to sample their Troll Skin Tattoo Aftercare product and I suggested that the best way to do so would be to have a fresh tattoo on which to use their product. The rest, they say is history.

Immediately after the agreement was reached, however, I had some concerns. What if Troll Skin was not something I could positively review? Into what kind of moral conundrum had I wandered? I assured myself that the Troll Skin Aftercare folks wouldn’t be sending out samples to an inkblogger if they weren’t 100% confident in their product.

Fortunately for me, no such moral dilemma surfaced, for I found the Troll Skin product to do remarkably well. In fact, I am so pleased with it, I intend to use it for all future tattoos.

My most recent tattoos were treated the same way. Aquaphor ointment for the first 72 hours, and then Lubriderm cream until the tattoo had fully healed. This regimen seemed to work for me, but it has its drawbacks. For example, whatever clothing you have that may cover the tattoo that has been treated with Auquaphor, bid it farewell. The spot of clothing near the tattoo absorbs the ointment and is discolored permanently. It is also a thicker, gooier substance.

The Troll Cream instructions indicated I could safely apply the product as part of the initial tattoo treatment. Not only did the recommendation of keeping it in the refrigerator help soothe the new tattoo upon application
of the cream, but it was 90% neater. No gooey mess to confront, and no clothing had to be sacrificed. This is because the product is water-based, so it absorbs better into the skin and less into the fabric around it.

More importantly, the healing process went faster than I remembered it had in the past. I was starting to see the peeling process as early as Saturday, only three days after getting the tattoo. This can be attributed to ingredients like natural oils from jojoba, sesame seed, almond, and avocado, as well as sea kelp extracts, Epidermal Growth Factor and Copper Peptides. This is what it looked like a week out:

One Week Old, Just a Little Scabbing Remains

The piece has healed quite nicely, as can be seen from the following photo of my two-week old body art:

2 Weeks, Healed and Vibrant!

Amazing that originally, the stencil looked like this:

I also like that the Troll Skin Aftercare cream comes in a little round tin, rather than a tube or cap-top bottle, which has the potential to open or break in transit.

The biggest drawback? Perhaps the price. Suggested retail is $27.50. However, considering this is a treatment for protecting a lifelong investment that can cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to obtain, it’s a veritable bargain. Consider also that my old treatment involved Aquaphor (approximately $8) and Lubriderm (also $8), you’re only paying  a little bit more, for what I deem to be a superior treatment.

Troll Skin also comes as a serum (MSRP $14) which is recommended for post-healing for “continued skin health and to maintain the vibrancy of the artwork”.

Readers of Tattoosday know that I don’t generally endorse products here, aside from an occasional book review. However, I would certainly recommend this product for tattoo healing. I know, I know, people are generally overprotective of their new tattoos and don’t like to change their healing regimens. Nonetheless, why not embrace a product if it’s an improvement to an old process, and why not spend a little more to protect something you will carry proudly for a lifetime?

For more information, visit the Troll Skin website at www.TrollSkin.com and SkinActives Scientific.


Thanks again to the good people at SkinActive for their cooperation with this project!

The Great Thanksgiving Tattoo Event!

Loyal readers may remember this past August when I called on fans of Tattoosday to choose (and generously bankroll) Friday the 13th tattoos for Melanie and me. If not, relive it here.

Well, a recent email from the good people at Skin Actives Scientific got me thinking. They asked if I wouldn't mind receiving some samples of their Troll Skin Aftercare products and talking about them here on Tattoosday.

I thought, what better way to promote something but to actually use it? The problem was, I had no immediate plans on getting a new tattoo. But then it hit me, as the good people at Hand of Glory Tattoo, who inked our Friday the 13th tattoos, announced that, starting today, through the end of next week, they have another tattoo special, in honor of Thanksgiving!

So we connected the dots and put our heads together to announce the following:

Behold the flash for the Hand of Glory Thanksgiving specials:

Now, dear readers, what tattoo should I get?

Send your first, second and third choices to Tattoosday@gmail.com. Every email (one per person please) will enter a reader into a random drawing for Troll Skin samples. Plus you'll have the pleasure of knowing you had a hand in deciding how I will be permanently honoring this most thankful of holidays.

You have until Wednesday at 9:00 AM (EST) to vote and when you wake up on Turkey Day, you can tune into Tattoosday to see which tattoo won and who will get Troll Skin samples!

Then, in a couple of weeks, you'll hear back from me about how the tattoo healed and what I think about the product.

And before some of you start scratching your heads about why I would indiscriminately get a tattoo just for the heck of it, I would remind you it is Thanksgiving, and what better to have on the human tapestry, than a reminder that we should always be thankful for the important things in life. I have a lot to be thankful for, above and beyond my awesome wife, Melanie, my kids, and my family and friends.

I am thankful for you, the Tattoosday contributors, fans and readers, for inspiring me with your stories and supporting me with your comments and emails.

And, of course, to the good folks at Skin Actives, for agreeing to support me in this Thanksgiving adventure, a special thanks this holiday season.

Stay tuned and don't forget to vote!

One Last Friday the 13th Post, for Melanie

So one of my friends Jenise had contributed to the Great Friday the 13th Tattoo Experiment and her votes for my tattoo were not along the finalists.

She was also keenly aware that we collected $31 in donations for my tattoo, $11 more than needed. Ginger, another friend, had added a dollar to the kitty for my lovely Friday-the-13th born wife Melanie, so Jenise, in an effort to make the experiment a complete success, chipped in the funds to bring us to an even $40, and she, Ginger, and Melanie separately concurred that this design was the one for her:

Much to our surprise, when we went back at 6:00 pm, business was brisk but it was only a 30-minute wait.

Artist Joey Wilson tattooed the Zoe Sonenberg-designed flash piece right below Melanie's $14 Valentine's tattoo (that story here).

The end result is lovely:

Thanks again to all contributors and supporters of Tattoosday through this process, and for everyone's patience while I went "off-book" for the last couple of days.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Tattoosday's Trip to Hand of Glory

As alluded to in the previous days' posts, I got a little carried away with a Friday the 13th tattoo experiment and opened up the idea to readers who contributed the funds for a tattoo ($13 special plus lucky $7 tip).

I had seven people send me money (thank you Ginger, Jen, Sean, John, Jenise, Janet and Nicole!) and then vote on the design out of five sheets of flash (seen here).

the flaw in my plan was not collecting the money, but dealing with the votes. I asked everyone to vote for three choices, and assigned 5 points to 1st choice, 3 for 2nd and 1 for 3rd. Fifteen different designs were selected, and only four were selected twice.

The winner was this classic, simple design by Derik Snell:

I was early and first in line, so I got the first tattoo of the day at Hand of Glory's sister shop, down the block, called The End is Near.

Brian Faulk was the assigned tattooer and he made quick work of the design:

Photo by Zoe

The end is result is a little messy, but it should heal nicely:

Thanks to all the kind people at Hand of Glory/The End is Near for their help this morning. I am planning on returning later with Melanie for her addition. We'll see how it goes....

Mark's Gypsy Tattoo Pays Tribute to the Female Singer-Songwriter

I have mentioned before that I tend to shy away from approaching subway commuters about their tattoos.

However, like most of my self-imposed guidelines, I always make exceptions for work that is transcendent. That is, if the tattoos are supremely blogworthy, I will solicit, for the sake of the reader, people on the subway. One such case presented itself last week on the Brooklyn-bound N train.

I approached Mark Turrigiano as the N emerged from the subterranean underworld and climbed the Manhattan Bridge. He has phenomenal sleeves, intricate work that wraps and surrounds the limbs.

His right arm, with an Asian-inspired theme, is mostly attributed to Elio Espana at Fly Rite Tattoo Studio (whose work has been seen previously here). His left arm hosts an incredibly huge and colorful octopus, which was inked by Lou at Third Eye Tattoo (whose work has appeared on Tattoosday here).

Because of the scale of those sleeves, we opted to go with one of his newer pieces, a gypsy on the back of his left calf:


This piece, designed and inked by Craig Rodriguez at Hand of Glory Tattoo Studio in Brooklyn, is seen by Mark as "a good way to commemorate [his] work with female singer-songwriters".

I like this piece a lot because it contains a lot of traditional gypsy elements, but is atypical in its presentation. It seems much larger with greater detail than the traditional gypsy profile tattoos that are much more common. The vividness of the colors also helps the tattoo pop, and you can almost feel the texture of her scarf.

Mark says the piece was completed in about four hours over two sessions. He estimates that his body is about 30% covered in ink.

Feel free to check out Mark's website here.

Thanks to Mark for sharing this great gypsy tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Joan of Arc Graces Claire's Arm

I ran into Claire, a musician and artist, on 5th Avenue in Bay Ridge last weekend, as we were both walking in the direction of 86th Street. She had some amazingly colorful and vivid tattoos on her arms, the one above included, and I couldn't help but stop and talk to her.

Claire studied art history at the University of North Texas and currently works at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. She admires Joan of Arc as an amazing historic figure and this incredible stained glass piece provided inspiration for the tattoo:


I haven't been able to locate where this is (the photo above is from a PBS piece on the Joan of Arc Phenomenon), but I believe it to be the source material from which the tattoo was adapted.

The piece was inked by Denise de la Cerda, whose work can be seen at www.ChicksDigTattoos.com.

Thanks to Claire for sharing her awesome Joan of Arc tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!