The much awaited,
much talked about,
feather tattoo!
Yyyyello, kidz!
Yup! Today was the day. Happy Tattoo Day!!! I was super excited all day, and surprisingly not the least bit nervous to get my tattoo today. Everyone I spoke about it to tried to psych me out, telling me that "the ribs are the worst place to get a tattoo. It hurts SO bad." Guuuurl, please. It hurt, yes, but it wasn't an unbearable, "OH EM GEE ... I can't breathe it hurts so bad. Wait one more second I seriously can't take it. It hurrrrts!!" No way. Anything poking at your little riblets at warped light speeds will make any living, breathing thing uncomfortable. However, it was definitely bearable. Maybe I just have a super high tolerance for pain, but I laid sideways though that forty five minutes of inking like a champ. GO TEAM!
I've been getting two of the same particular questions from a lot of people ...
1. Where did you get your ink done/who did it?
2. Does your tattoo mean anything?
Let me lay down the specifics, as I always do...
1. I got my tattoo done at Fun City in The Village in New York. Fun City and Daredevil Tattoo (located on the Lower East Side in New York, who I was originally going to work with, until I picked a different artist), are owned by the same owner. Both Fun City and Daredevil are famously well known for their incredible artists. I am not exaggerating by any means when I say that their artists are truly the best around. (Check out www.daredeviltattoo.com and click on "Artists" to view their work.) Claire was my artist. She's super super detailed, focused, and totally understood exactly what I wanted. And considering we were emailing each other pictures and ideas via our blackberries constantly (literally), she came up with the perfect tattoo. What's even cooler, is that she drew up the base of what my feather would be, and freehanded the rest. I love wingin' it.
2. I'm not the type of person to get something because I think it's "pretty". I always loved the whole idea of a feather tattoo - it's delicate, it's dainty, it's feminine without being annoyingly girly (aka Rose on ankle tattoo. BAH! Cliche!), and it's simple. Being a Christian, my nose is in my bible a lot. I kept coming across this one verse, and every time I read it, it struck a cord with me. Psalm 91:4 "He shall cover you with his feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge." I put two and two together, and voila, my tattoo was born. I love the simplicity of it, and I love that it has a statement to make. Everything about it wows me. As for the tattoo itself...
I could not be happier. For months, I had this vision of this feather on my ribs, picturing it in my head exactly what it was going to look like. But what I walked out with, was a tattoo that was a hundred times more beautiful that I ever could have dreamed up in my head. I love every last thing about it. She nailed it down to the littlest detail. Her shading is impeccable, the placement and size are perfect, and the outcome was beyond what I ever dreamed it could possibly look like. It's kind of hard to tell in the photo, but if you look at the middle right side of the feather, pieces of the feather are overlapping. It's not a perfectly smooth feather, it's pieced in some areas, and smooth in others. It was specially requested by me that she make the feather not a perfect feather, but one that looks like it's been through something. Those little imperfections are a reminder that even though we go through some points in our lives where its not all perfect and smooth, things get broke up and shaken up, but no matter what, it's still a beautiful outcome.
Today was a big day for me. I realized that if you set small goals along the way, and set big goals in between the small ones, it motivates you and builds you up to be a bigger, better, faster, stronger person. It might sound silly to say, but I feel like I just took a step up on my ladder of life. I accomplished a goal that people tried to pull me away from accomplishing, simply because they judged the fact that it was a tattoo, it meant nothing more to them. My heart and my faith are in this. It means the world to me. And now I can carry it with me everywhere I go, for the rest of my life.
Current Listen: Peacebone - Animal Collective
