First tatoo stories!

[Busty Biltwell]

Tell us where, when, and why!

Did you get your first tattoo on Spring Break in Mexico? Were you wasted on your 18th birthday? What about solidifying a bond with your significant other and getting their name tattooed on your ass?

For better or worse, tell us your first tattoo story!

[Wink Holliday]

I'd known that I wanted a tattoo for about 15 years before I finally got one. The delay was in deciding WHAT to have inked! I didn't want flash, and I knew that I wouldn't be satisfied with anything I drew myself (we're our own worst critics, after all). I had a couple of discussions here and there with tattoo artists about my ideas, but nothing was gelling. Eventually, the pressure was on: A childhood friend was flying in to visit, and we had appointments to get inked together. She was getting a Japanese watercolor of a crab (our shared zodiac symbol) and I was getting... um... uh... s***.

My sister's house (and all of its contents) had burned down a few months earlier, and as my friend and I discussed the aftermath, I started digging around for my most sentimental bits of ephemera; the stuff I was considering putting in a fire safe. I pulled out the last surviving copy of my birth announcement, which my father had printed himself from linoleum blocks he'd carved based on a drawing my then-6-year-old sister had done on the day I was born. "The baby goin to be bornd now today" it read, and was embellished with a brightly colored flower.

A brightly colored flower. The last surviving copy of something precious to me. Something that could be lost in the blink of an eye. Well, that was settled. And so, 7 years later, it needs just a little retouching (the pink has faded), but it's still beautiful and meaningful and everyone in my family just loves it. Even my father, who had long given me the old "over my dead body" talk. Now, he asks me to show it off to everyone we meet. Thank goodness it's on my ankle!

[Malice In Wonderland]

My first tattoo was free and not worth the money I paid for it, lol. After I graduated college, I went back to visit some friends. We went out to a club and proceeded to get very f***** up. I may or may not have been under the influence of some naughty mood alterers. So I'm sitting next to some guy (who also may or may not have been on the same mood enhancer) and reach over and lift the sleeve of his shirt to get a better look at his tattoo. We start talking tattoos and I tell him I want one and he tells me he's a tattoo artist. He then offers to tattoo me for free if I drop by his shop. So I do. Of course, I've been partying hard all weekend long and I'm fairly tired and burnt out by this point so maybe I was not thinking so clearly. He does this small tribal rose on my hip that is truely awful. Of course I remember thinking it was great at the time. Fortunitely my parents had a "you can't live under our roof if you have a tattoo" rule and I had to hide it or it may have ended up being bigger and in a much more visible spot. Now years later, I realize he must have been an apprentice and gave it to me for free because he was just happy to have someone to do work on. Recently I met a guy who now works with that tattoo artist and apparently he's really good now. Of course, it is ten years later. When I had a friend tattoo my thigh near the old, awful tattoo, he offered to cover it up, but I decided to keep it. Even with as bad as it is, it defintiley holds a lot of great memories from that weekend! And it's not like most ppl will ever get to see it anyway.

[Lovely Lacey Lin]

I got my first tattoo at 14 like two days before Thanksgiving as a 15th birthday from my mom. Im pretty sure my mom had been asking me what my first tattoo would be probably since i was in the womb. I came up with the idea when I was about nine. I pretty much have the map of ireland written on my face so i went along with getting an irish celtic knot on my back shoulder which represents "life, death and rebirth" I remember everything about that day. The little snow on the ground. The scraf i was wearing in my hair, my purple stripped tank top with a little lace on it. Funny I have six tattoos now, and I just turned 18 and havent gotten anymore yet haha. I have a gyspy snow white on my left forearm, an angel on my ankle, i have a bird holding a heart which reads mama (for her mothersday gift lol), me and my mom got matching tattoos on the inside of our wrists, and then theirs my pin up on my upper arm.

[Briana]

thats awesome. i want the water kanji symbol as well incorporated somehow in a piece that i want.

Red Qt said:

To be safe, my first tattoo was behind my ear. I don't see it and I can make it less visable if need be. It is the kanji symbol for water in blue. I love though!!!! so not a mistake at all......working on more now.

[Briana]

I had my first tattoo idea in mind since I was about 15 or 16. I was listening to a song by 10 Years & a specific line caught my ears..."Kiss the Abstract". As soon as I heard it it never left my thoughts & it immediately became my idea for my first tattoo. I didn't get it until I was 19. I got it last May. I went to someone I was familiar with because my cousin is friends with her. I finally had enough money to spare & stopped in while they were having a sale: 15% off tattoos, so why not? I walked in, she drew it up & I got my ink that day. Its a script around my entire left ankle reading Kiss the Abstract. I love it. It has such a deep meaning to me.

Overall my experience was very good. I loved my tattooist, the pain wasn't horrible...it was more irritating than anything & I wanted to scratch the hell out of it. I loved it & about 2 months later I got my next tattoo. I am not currently on my own waiting list to get my next one...darn money.

[Golden Browne]

What a nice thread.

I always knew I was going to get tattoos. I decided I wouldn't get one until after I was done college... then it took me another year to think out what I was going to get... and another year to find the artist.

So finally a group of co-workers and I all went to the shop together for our first tattoos. I had just arrived at the shop from a yoga camping trip. I got the first 2hrs of my back piece. It was a lotus on my left hip. I tried to get the rose on my right hip but Hunter didn't have time. The experience was great (at least for my friends, I'm sure that the artists didn't enjoy a bunch of rowdy liquor store kids running around the shop). Unfortunetly, It was Baltimore in the summer and I had to teach a yoga class. I ended up getting a migraine and couldn't go out celebrating afterwards.

Instead my boyfriend (now "the ex") was drunk and abandoned at the bus stop with 4 high school students and I had to go pick them up. So there I was, freshly tattooed with a migraine headache, stuffing 5 drunks into a Jeep Wrangler filled with camping equipment. Then one of the high school students farted. Gross.

[Wink Holliday]

You crack me up. :)

Golden Browne said:

So there I was, freshly tattooed with a migraine headache, stuffing 5 drunks into a Jeep Wrangler filled with camping equipment. Then one of the high school students farted. Gross.

[Little Queenie]

Oh god...ahahha...i get my fist tatto when i was 17..as i had no age a seach for a studio that dont ask me for it..I FOUND IT...was so anxious that I arrived an hour before dialing..ahhahah...
I tattooed an eight ball on the neck...and for my happiness later spent the summer learning to tattoo and now I am the once in a while work in there...
lucky girl hum???ahahhahha...

[Christina Misae]

I got my first tattoo when I was eighteen as a birthday present from my mom. (little did she know what she was getting me into) It was a chinese dragon rising out of flames. I was so nervous I thought I was going to be sick but when the needle touched my skin for the first time I was like "this doesn't hurt as bad as everyone said it would." And ever since then I have not stopped getting tattoos and I'm living happily ever after. ; )

[RaZor]

I got mine about a year and a half ago...

I had just broken up from a relationship I shouldn't have been in... and I needed to reboot my entire life. I basically wasted my entire 20's ... yikes!

I have always been a fan of Disney, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit was my favorite movie. Also being a fan of retro and pin-up art... Jessica Rabbit was a natural choice for me!

I got it done by Michelle at Fat Katt Studios in Keyport, NJ. I actually grew up with her and went to High School with her. As you can see on my profile, she did a beautiful job! Now that I've just turned 30, I am trying to get my body in better shape... as soon as I reach my goals, I will be do to get my arms done up... and hopefully something equally hot! :)

[miss Charlie Pearl]

I don't know how I decided to get my first tattoo... I had always wanted tattoos... that was a given. But I never knew where to start. I had been playing around with the idea of getting a pair of legs wearing fishnets for a few years and finally one day I just said to myself, "thats it! i am going to do it" my best friend had recently gotten a tattoo while we were together and I just had to itch I guess. Luckily for me the tattoo parlor I knew and trusted was right around the corner from my house, so I just got in the car and went! The funniest part of the whole thing was trying to explain to the artist that I wanted legs only. He looked at me with such a cock eye and said, "coming out of where?!" So the next 15 minutes was me assuring him that there was a way to draw legs without attaching them to a body... I had decided to put the tat behind my ear and so it wasn't very large. I had been psyching myself out all day, gearing up for the pain and I was thrilled when the needle first hit the skin. It was the first time I had experienced a high from an adrenaline rush. I felt euphoric. If anything the gun was just super loud in my ear canal as the vibrations rattled my jaw bone. As Falcon, my artist, had promised the most uncomfortable part was holding my neck to the side for 45 minutes. I was so pleasantly surprised to see the finished product because I didn't envision so much detail and shading when I came up with the idea. Falcon added a sling back heel and small red bows to detail the stockings! By the time we were done I was jumping up and down inside wishing I could sit though another one. Falcon laughed at me and said I should go home and let that heal before I got another... It is the only addiction I have, and the best I could have in my opinion.

[Sara Sundae]

My first tattoo was a celtic knot on my back too! It was for my 23rd birthday . . . I was a "late bloomer"

Lovely Lace Lin said:

I got my first tattoo at 14 like two days before Thanksgiving as a 15th birthday from my mom. Im pretty sure my mom had been asking me what my first tattoo would be probably since i was in the womb. I came up with the idea when I was about nine. I pretty much have the map of ireland written on my face so i went along with getting an irish celtic knot on my back shoulder which represents "life, death and rebirth" I remember everything about that day. The little snow on the ground. The scraf i was wearing in my hair, my purple stripped tank top with a little lace on it. Funny I have six tattoos now, and I just turned 18 and havent gotten anymore yet haha. I have a gyspy snow white on my left forearm, an angel on my ankle, i have a bird holding a heart which reads mama (for her mothersday gift lol), me and my mom got matching tattoos on the inside of our wrists, and then theirs my pin up on my upper arm.