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The Art of Tattoos: We’re Showing Off Our Ink!

From full sleeves to the most minimal designs, amazing tattoos are pieces of art that will stay with you forever. Whether you’re a fan of the Sailor Jerry Flash style, hyper-realistic floral designs, or regrettable tattoos that end up on Buzzfeed, every tattoo wearer has a preferred style. And from artists offering free tattoos in our forums to the great nipple wizard petition of 2013, we have a fun relationship with tats. So, in honor of the last week of our Tattoo Challenge (hurry and submit!), a few of us here wanted to share our own ink with you for an extra boost of inspiration! Check ’em out below.

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Tee from Aled’s Artist Shop.

The Penrose Triforce tattoo was a present to myself after coming back to the US. I always wanted to get a Zelda tattoo and John Tibbott let me use his design. It’s also weirdly fitting that my first tattoo was a Threadless design. The Chicago tattoo was a collaboration with my friend Mike Ramos here in Chicago. I wanted something to commemorate my adoptive home and he was gracious enough to design and tattoo this for me.

 

Luis, Artist Success Manager

I’ve been obsessed with Selena my whole life. After seeing this 2010 Texas Monthly magazine cover that made her look like a Saint, I immediately knew I was going to get that illustration tattooed on me as a tribute one day. I posted this picture on my Instagram right after I got it and I was so stoked that the illustrator (Marc Burckhardt) noticed it! He ended up posting on his account too, but I was just happy that he knew how much that piece meant to me.

 

Crystal, Community Experience Team

Muscle tank: “Owls of the Nile” by Rachel Caldwell.

My favorite flower in this half-sleeve bouquet is the marigold – my son’s birth flower. He was two months old when I got this. It was my first tattoo and I remember thinking, “This is cake compared to childbirth!”

 

 

Betsy, Senior Front End Engineer

Tattoo on the left: from Agents of Shield. | Tattoo on the right: from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

These two characters have been very important to me over the last couple of years. They are characters I can relate to but they also have the traits I aspire to have in day-to-day life. The loyalty through hardship is a real test of inner strength and can easily be swept aside. It is important to me to have a permanent reminder.

 

“It is important to draw wisdom from different places. If you take it from only one place it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements, the other nations, will help you become whole. It is the combination of the four elements in one person that makes the Avatar so powerful. But it can make you more powerful, too.” – Uncle Iroh, “Avatar the Last Airbender”

 

 

Stacie, Community Experience Team

I was visiting my friend in San Francisco on Halloween, when we passed this amazing tattoo shop while thrifting. We both looked at each other like, “you game?”, and proceeded to walk in. The first thing that came to mind was this game my family played with me as kid called Loteria, similar to bingo. Out of all 54 cards, the randomosity of La Mano (number 21) always stood out to me the most.

 

Valerie, Bucketfeet Product Graphic Designer

Left: [That tattoo was from] a thread that I responded to with a tattoo idea and he picked me. You can see my tattoo on the 3rd page. It’s my favorite tattoo because it was for my kids.

 

Right: This is Grant Morrison and I. I’m showing off my tattoo from his comic The Invisibles while he’s wearing the shirt with the cover design.

 

I have a few other tattoos but they don’t have as good stories. One of a Parlor Tattoo Prints design, one of an old threadless design…I do have my oldest tattoo that I got when I was a teenager. I was in a punk band called Duck Tape and our logo was a punk-rock-looking Donald Duck flipping you off. So at the time…I thought it was a good tattoo idea. Then, I also used to be really into astrology as a kid and both my sun and moon signs are scorpio. So I have a tattoo of two scorpions kind of melting together on my back.

 

 

Lance, Artist Shops Account Director & Comic Book Czar

Got a tattoo idea? Enter the tattoo challenge!

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Carlyn Hill

Dad joke aficionado, cartoonist, & contributor for sites like HelloGiggles and The Mary Sue by night. When I'm not writing or drawing, you can find me in my cave of a room hanging out with my boyfriend, Netflix.