Jared's Sleeve Reflects His Journey Through the Music Business

I met Jared back in April outside of Penn Station on Eighth Avenue. He had an interesting sleeve that he offered to share:

Jared explained that the concept of the sleeve was based on his experience in the music industry. He had been a musician, but gave up the professional calling "about six months ago." He elaborated:

"...It's a sacrificial piece ... the heart right there [at the center of the arm, in the ditch] ... music's in your DNA and it rips your heart open ...

... and the sacrifice you have to go through ... two faces are the two faces you had to deal with in the music business..."

The work above was done by two free-lance artists. The top section of the sleeve was done by a guy named Steve, and the bottom section with the two faces was done by another person whose name Jared doesn't recall.

Thanks to Jared for sharing this work with us here on Tattoosday!

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August guest artist info, third and final part

Ok, last one for now. It better be, cause i seriously doubt we have room for more people unless we start using the back rooms too!

As you know, we have Nick coming in August (and might i add a "yay!" to that), but what you don't know is that Nick is bringing more Hong Kong peeps with him.
Or rather, Nick's friend Ross is traveling around Europe and decided to come visit too!

So, Ross Turpin, from Hong Kong will be guesting at the shop from August 16th to 18th.

If you'd like to book an appointment with him, please send an email with your ideas for the tattoo, placement, budget and preferred date to get tattooed to conspiracyinctattoo@gmail.com, and i'll be happy to book you in.

Remember, as always, fun custom stuff only, and the deposit can be paid at the shop.

Scroll down to see some of Ross' work, and check out his instagram (@rossturpin) and his blog for more tattoos!

Ok, that's it for now. No excuses to not come by in August and get a sweet new tattoo from one of our guests!

 

DK: Vi har tre gæste tatovører der kommer på besøg i August, så endelig kommer der en chance for at få en awesome tatovering uden at stå på venteliste i årevis.

Nummer tre er Ross Turpin fra Hong Kong, der kommer fra den 16. til 18. August.

Hvis du kunne tænke dig at blive tatoveret af ham skal du sende os en mail (email adresse står i den engelske tekst) med dine ideer til design og placering, samt evt. budget og dato du kan blive tatoveret.

Og husk, kun sjove ideer!

Depositum kan betales her i butikken.

Håber at høre fra jer!

Tattoos by Ross Turpin

Scroll down to read part one and two!

Vicki's Half-Woman, Half-Octopus Tattoo

I met Vicki at the DeKalb Avenue subway station in Brooklyn last month and I had to ask her about this tattoo.

This design is a half-woman, half-octopus, and was done by Brian Faulk at Hand of Glory Tattoo in Park Slope. She elaborated:

"I went to him [Brian] with a picture from the Victorian era that was of a woman who is all buttoned up, with a high collar, and then her bustle and her skirt are an octopus, so I went to him and said this is something to go from, but I want it to be more modern and not so buttoned up...it was [also] inspired by a song by Carla Kihlstedt, who's in a band called Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, so this is from a song from her band 2 Foot Yard ... the song is called "Octopus" [and] it's the story of a woman and all the different facets of her personality, pulling her in different directions."

Here's another look at the tattoo from the shop's website:

© 2012 The End Is Near - All rights reserved

Brian, the artist from Hand of Glory/The End is Near, has tattooed me before, as reported here and here.

Thanks to Vicki for sharing her woman/octopus with us here on Tattoosday!

Here's a performance of "Octopus" from YouTube:

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

August guest artist info, part deux

Ok, who's up for part two of the August Guest Trilogy?

No one in Copenhagen, that's for sure, cause they're all at Roskilde Festival watching Bruce Springsteen right now....*grrr*.... but to everyone else, here's some more guest artist info for you!

Wendy Pham, also from Melbourne, Australia will be guesting at the shop from August 13th to 15th, plus the 23rd and 24th as well.

If you'd like to book an appointment with her, please send an email with your ideas for the tattoo, placement, budget and preferred date to get tattooed to wendy_p@live.com.au.

Remember, as always, fun custom stuff only!

Scroll down to see some of her awesome work, and check out her instagram for more tattoos and paintings (@wendy_pham).

I might wait with the next guest post until Monday... just to give people a chance to get home from Roskilde.

You think i'm kidding, but i'm not, i'm the only person left in Copenhagen right now!

 

DK: Vi har tre gæste tatovører der kommer på besøg i August, så endelig kommer der en chance for at få en awesome tatovering uden at stå på venteliste i årevis.

Nummer to er Wendy Pham fra Australien, der kommer fra den 13. til 15. August, samt den 23. og 24. August.

Hvis du kunne tænke dig at blive tatoveret af Wendy skal du sende hende en mail (email adresse står i den engelske tekst) med dine ideer til design og placering, samt evt. budget og dato du kan blive tatoveret.

Og husk, kun sjove ideer!

Tattoos by Wendy Pham

Jeniffer's Birthday Tattoo, Honoring Babba

I spotted Jeniffer on the steps outside of Madison Square Garden on the last day in May and couldn't resist asking her about this tattoo:

Jeniffer, who is from Sydney, Australia, was visiting New York in April 2011 and had this Matroyshka doll (more commonly referred to as a Russian nesting doll) done in honor of her twenty-first birthday. It was a gift from her sister, who got the same tattoo.

The tattoo was done by Sarah Schor in Brooklyn.

Jeniffer elaborated on the origin of the tattoo:

"There's three of us [sisters]. I'm the youngest. The sister who got it is the oldest and ...we went to get something together and we were trying to come up with something that came in threes ... three amigos, three musketeers, little pigs, and then we just, we've ... got European background, so we thought babushkas ... Babba is what we call my grandmother ... and all three of us have always been close to her ... sort of a triple whammy ... we meant to actually get differing sizes, but we couldn't convince the middle sister to get it, so, we ended up just getting the same."

Thanks to Jeniffer for sharing this lovely tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

August guest artist info, part one

Hey guys!

I know it's been a while since we've had guests at the shop, but that's about to change.

In August we have no less than three guest artists visiting, or four actually, if you count Nick as a guest!

Ok, so the first one up is Matthew Gordon from Melbourne, Australia.

He'll be with us from August 20th to 25th and if you'd like to book an appointment, send an email with your ideas for the tattoo, placement, budget and preferred date to get tattooed to matthewgordon@live.com.au

Remember, fun custom stuff only!

Scroll down to see examples of his work, and click here to see even more on his blog... oh, and look him up on instagram too (@matthew_gordon)!

Next guest artist post is coming up tomorrow... how very exciting!

DK: Vi har tre gæste tatovører der kommer på besøg i August, så endelig kommer der en chance for at få en awesome tatovering uden at stå på venteliste i årevis.

Den første er Matthew Gordon fra Australien (check links i den engelske tekst) der kommer fra den 20. til 25. August.

Hvis du kunne tænke dig at blive tatoveret af ham skal du sende ham en mail med dine ideer til design og placering, samt evt. budget og dato du kan blive tatoveret.

Og husk, kun sjove ideer!

Tattoos by Matthew Gordon

Lakota and the Evolution of Man: A Tattoo Odyssey

This colorful tattoo belongs to Lakota, who I met in Penn Station back in March.

He credited his work to Mike Drexler at Fly Rite Tattoo in Brooklyn.

Lakota explained the origins of this piece:

"It's actually inspired by the opening scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey ... this is the specific moment when  man is elevated from primitive simian ...I really, really liked that concept and that idea. I brought in a couple of pictures. I told [Mike Drexler] what I had in mind and he did the final design."

Lakota estimates that the piece was done in three sessions over an eleven hour span and that the fist at the top of the monolith was part of an original first tattoo that was blended into this new design.

Thanks to Lakota for sharing this cool and interesting tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Story Behind Teddy Roosevelt and the Bear in a Wheelchair

Well, America is another year older, so it seems appropriate to honor our post-birthday euphoria with this unique presidential tattoo:

I spotted this piece back in May in Penn Station on the right calf of Emma. And, your eyes are not deceiving you, that's Theodore Roosevelt and a bear cub in a wheelchair.

The million dollar question, of course, was "Why do you have Theodore Roosevelt on your leg?" Emma replied:

"The short answer is that I think that he was super bad-ass and he's my favorite president. The long answer is that it came from a long decision process - I was gonna get Stephen Hawking and F.D.R, one on either calves, in wheelchairs, so then they could go for walks together and then I realized that that was just absolutely stupid. So I wanted to keep the wheelchair because I really like the way wheelchairs look and I decided instead of FDR, that I'd choose Teddy because he's my favorite president. And then I stuck the bear in the wheelchair so they could be friends because of all of his [Roosevelt's] naturalism...".

An interesting, well-thought out response, but certainly unusual. In fact, the artist, Virginia Elwood at New York Adorned, posted this on her website here, under the heading, What's the Weirdest Tattoo You've Ever Done? As Virginia says in her post, "this was her first tattoo and she sat like a champ. Teddy would be proud."


Thanks to Emma for sharing this wonderful and unusual tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Kristen's Ink Honors a Generational Vocation

At the end of last summer, we saw a traditional-style tattoo from Kristen (here).

Since then, our paths have crossed several times in the neighborhood. Last weekend, I once again had the good fortune to be doing laundry at the same time Kristen was, and I asked if she'd share the piece above, which is dedicated to her mother.

Kristen explained that her grandmother and mother were both nurses, and she, too, is in the same profession. It's a tribute not only to her mother, but a symbol honoring three generations of dedicated women.

She explained that this, too, was inked by an artist named Twace who works in Brooklyn. You can see some of his work on the site for the Brooklyn shop Citizen Ink.


Thanks again to Kristen for sharing her ink with us here on Tattoosday. 


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Lucy's Radiolarian

I met Lucy yesterday in Penn Station after I spotted this cool tattoo on her right arm:

Lucy credits the artist JK5 with this tattoo. She said he did this out of Saved Tattoo, but he freelances and has also worked out of Dare Devil Tattoo.

And what is this on her arm?

Lucy explained that this is based on an illustration by German biologist/naturalist Ernst Haeckel and depicts a creature known as a radiolarian, an amoeboid protozoa. This is something you would see on the great science tattoo site, Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium

Thanks to Lucy for sharing this wonderful tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Jenn's Robotic Tattoos, with a Hand-Mixer to Boot

Back in April, I passed Jenn in Penn Station and this tattoo stopped me in my tracks:

Jenn, who has eleven tattoos, explained that her work has a predominant robot theme. A lot of her work was done by Cyndi Lou at Squid & Whale Tattoo in Portland, Maine.

Speaking about the tattoo above, Jenn told me:

"It's the lucky cat but we doctored him up to have the robot armor and a lot of the metal work ... everything's made of metal to fit the theme. I needed some good luck two years ago, so we did it ... I really like the bright colors."

When I asked if the cat brought her good luck, she acknowledged that he did, "it's been a really good year, actually, a very successful year."

And then she was kind enough to share her chest piece, which features a mechanical heart:

And one last tattoo from Jenn is this hand mixer on her right forearm:

Jenn is a baker, and this ties into her vocation.

Thanks to Jenn for sharing these awesome tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Congratulations to our Pantera Giveaway Winners!

One small administrative matter: we never formally announced the contest winners for our Pantera giveaway.

These Tattoosday readers

1. Ryan Loomis
2. William Carter
3. Terry Payne
4. Sandy Tran

were our lucky winners, each receiving copies of Pantera's 20th anniversary CD/DVD of Vulgar Display of Power.

Congrats to all!

Joe's Motto: Ora et Labora

Last September, at my dear friend Jill's wedding, I met Joe, who is the father of Kathy (Jill's step-mother).

There wasn't a lot of visible ink at the wedding, but when Kathy saw me at the reception, she yelled "Hey, Tattoosday!" and brought Joe over to see me.

He held out his wrists and I snapped the photo above.

It was a bit noisy at the reception, but he basically said that this was his motto. In Latin, Ora et Labora  mean "pray and work," and as Joe tells it, all he does is work and pray. The phrase is attributed to Saint Benedict.

Kathy concurs, "I will tell you that he does is work and pray ... or tell us to work and pray ... it really is quite a theme with him."

This was tattooed at Godspeed Tattoo in Breckenridge, Colorado. Joe got these words inked on his wrists a few years back, when he was in his early seventies. Who says cool tattoos are just for the youth?

Thanks to Joe for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Serenity from Anthony

I spotted Anthony's ink while biking along the Belt Parkway promenade at the end of May.

Always a fan of word tattoos, I stopped him while he was jogging and he was kind enough to stop and allow me to snap the photo above.

It was only after I got a chance to see it that I recognized the top verse as what is commonly called the Serenity Prayer:

God Grant me

the serenity to accept

the things I cannot change

courage to change

the things I can

and wisdom to

know the difference.

When I asked why he chose the Serenity Prayer as a tattoo, he said, "I think it's a good way to look at life, every day, with a positive attitude."

I am not as familiar with the passage below it

Living one day at a time

Enjoying one moment at a time

Accepting hardships as

the pathway to peace

It turns out that those four lines are the next in the sequence of the verse composed by Reinhold Niebuhr, from which the Serenity Prayer was adopted.

He credited an artist named Omar at a shop on Christopher Street in Manhattan with these tattoos. It likely could have been Tattoo Heaven.

Thanks to Anthony for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Dave's Unusual Skull

Just a quick post for Friday.

Earlier this week, I met Dave on the West 4th Street platform and took a picture of this tattoo on his leg:

I like this skull because it's so unusual. It has the feel of a sugar skull, but it's not quite, It's certainly not your typical piece, and the neon colors really make it jump off the skin.

He got this about three years ago at a shop in Atlanta called the Ink Spot.

Thanks to Dave for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Laici's Astrological Cluster

I met Laici last month outside of Penn Station, near the corner of 33rd Street and 8th Avenue. I was intrigued by this design on her upper right arm:

This design consists of several symbols from the Zodiac.

Laici explained, "My dad's a Cancer, my mom's an Aries, my sister and I are Scorpios, and my brother is a Sagittarius."


She designed this piece herself by combining the four symbols into a cohesive design:

The four elements combined on her arm to represent her family unit. It's a neat concept and it is executed rather nicely. I especially like how she combined the last two parts, Scorpio and Sagittarius, to form one fluid symbol that encapsulates her and her siblings together.

Thanks to Laici for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

The four Zodiac symbols illustrated above were linked from TattooSymbol.com.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Originals!

Ok, as i mentioned in my last post, we decided to sell the original witch paintings from Saturdays flash day, since they're such a good little size, and we figured it'd be a nice opportunity for people to grab an Uncle Allan original (god knows there aren't too many of them around!)

So here are the ones we have left.
Size is approximately 10.5 cm x 14.7 cm.
If you're interested, send an email to conspiracyinctattoo@gmail.com and we'll take it from there!

Update: all of the paintings have been sold!
Thanks for the interest, we hope they'll look all pretty in their new homes!

Sierra's Mayflower in June

Last month, I found myself at the corner of 86th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan, waiting for the crosstown bus.

I looked over to my right and saw a tattoo with incredible line work:

This tattoo belongs to Sierra, who was kind enough to send me a photo of the tattoo later that evening. She also told me a little more about the piece:

"My tattoo is of the Mayflower. My parents took me to Plymouth a lot as a child and it fostered a great love of American History. I wanted something to commemorate that. I chose this scale drawing because I wanted something 'antique-ish' and not to 'pirate-y'."

Sierra credits the talented Mark Harada at East Side Ink with this amazingly well-lined work. "I love [his] work," she wrote me, "and do plan to have him do another for me in the future."

Thanks to Sierra for sharing her Mayflower with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Anna's Ship, With a Nod to a Favorite Song

Yesterday I posted Bjorn's Michael Jackson Thriller tattoo. When I met him, walking on the Coney Island Boardwalk, he was accompanied by Anna, who also had quite a few tattoos. She offered up this one on her left thigh:

The banner around this classic ship tattoo reads "Yo no soy marinero soy el capitán."

This is a refrain from the Richie Valens song "La Bamba," and is translated as "I am not a sailor, I am a captain." This was Anna's favorite song when she was a kid.

She credited this cool tattoo to Nick Caruso, when he was at Flyrite Tattoo in Brooklyn. Nick has since left Flyrite and opened up Bound for Glory Tattoo in Staten Island.

Thanks to Anna for sharing this awesome tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.