The worst of the worst (NSFW reader submission)

This tattoo is so bad and so NSFW that I can’t show it above the jump.
Alex wrote to me, and said “the bet was high card draw best 2 out of 3 winner got to pick, but had to pay for the losers tattoo.”
Click to find out what the winner picked for him, but remember, it’s graphic.

Coverup

Coverup of an old hand-poked tattoo of a Centipede. Changed it into a Neo Tribalistic Dragon.

1st Tattoo Event

24th April 2008 @ Chillies - Immortal Nite.

This is the very first sponsored event by Immortal Tattoos @ Chillies.

Carlston (AcidCrue) and Myself checking up on the gear before I get it on !!

Getting Started...

Almost there...

The Final Product - Chucky in Dotted Works.

PS : Got too wasted to take more pics, but there will be more in upcoming updates. Hick* Hahaha !!

New School Swallow

Swallow tattoos once common among sailors years ago now seem to have been rediscovered and transformed into a new school style of tattoo. It is not uncommon to see some retro chick with swallow tattoos emblazoned across the chest, abdomen or even on the arms.

Sailors would have swallows tattooed as a sort of metaphor for finding their way, because the legend goes that if you were ever lost at sea if you saw a swallow you could follow it home. There are different versions of why people get swallows and can also mean a person has done time in prison or 'bird'.

Swallow tattoos seem to be popular with those into Rockabilly and are usually tattooed on either side of the neck for guys or across the chest or abdomen for chicks. The most famous person with this style of tattoo is Marc Almond of SoftCell fame a British group popular in the 80's and early 90's.

The traditional tattoo means: A sailor gets a set of swallows on his chest. The story goes if he or she drowns, the swallows come down and lift his soul to the heavens.

Philly Tattoo Convention-2008

(1/2 the crew. megan, zac, tyrant, & tina not pictured)
Lori (bottom left) is the person who has the drag queen pin up girl, and it's printed in this month's issue of ITA.

I have a whisper of a voice right now, so it's a good thing I'm typing. I kicked off the whole Tattoo Convention weekend by being the first one to start a tattoo out of the 180 artists that attended. Some people were setting up still, most people has not yet arrived, but with a few people watching, I started on a pretty unicorn on my good friend Megan.

I stayed at her and Zac's house the night before (in Philly), so we were there bright and early. I think most of the CT crew arrived before there were more than a few people tattooing. I handed out Bird Flu Crew shirts, and they made things awesome pretty quick.

Cases of Dr Pepper arrived with them, and the party started. I had a bunch of problems, with equipment breaking ( I hate air travel ) and not having supplies, but the nicest humans to ever hold tattoo machines had a booth across from me, and they hooked me up over, and over, and over again. Thanks, my Ohioan guardian angel pirates.
After Megan was Ghostship Matt, who sat for at least 6 hours.


Guy Aitchison's collection of "Scratch Art- scratchboard art of the tattoo artists" was unveiled at this convention, and my Bird Flu piece was included. I'm pretty excited about that, for sure. I think you can get a copy on his website.
The next day more of the CT crew came down, I handed out more shirts, and then drew on and tattooed an entire peacock half sleeve for Sarah. She made it a grueling 6.5 hours, and was still smiling afterwards.

Then tyrant rocked out for a tree with finger roots on his ribs for a bunch of hours, and he won the bet by not pissing himself.

Even though we were then hitting the closing time for the day, we needed to squeeze in a rework/cover up for Bethany. She drove nine hours to fix her Blue Lobster tattoo, which was originally a wedding gift from me. Blue lobsters may be only one in a million, but that doesn't mean they are also dope. So, since she left the dude, she needed a little change to the tattoo.


We then had a super fun late night, hanging out till some ridiculous time in the morning, waiting for the sugar to wear off, so we could go to bed. We found some poop in the hallway (originating from dog or human is still being debated), and couldn't just leave it there....so we turned it into art. All the credit to my man Tyrant.

On Sunday, Dean got a huge fanged snake, which fit in between his graffitti piece and his puking bird. He sat forever, but we didn't finish the forearm sleeve completely. Soon, though.
Then Megan's equally rad half Zac came and got a tree coming out of a turtle shell. I drew it on with sharpies, and in order to not over use the color green, i poored 14 caps of color, none of which were green. I'm pretty into it.

That took me past the end of the tattoo convention by an hour, and by the time I was done packing up, the workers had removed all of the booths around me. I then went out, found a Chinese restaurant open late, and had my first vegetables in days. Then I went and hung out with my Ohio buddies telling stories till the wee hours when they kicked me out.
My favorite quotes of the weekend were these:
Megan (in a lot of pain) : "Tattoos are so stupid!!"
Guy Aitchison walking past us in the hallway: "WHO pooped in the hallway? !!?!"
Megan, and Bill Clinton, respectively, on the streets of Philly: "Whooooo! Hooo! Bill!" - "Hey, guys".


Consider me the busiest, loudest, and biggest sticker distributer of the whole show. A gazillion thanks to everyone that drove too far to spend too much on a hotel room, bought me vegan goodies, kept me stocked on the DP, rocked a shirt and kept my booth tidy, held down the fort and basically made Philly a lot more like CT for at least three days. I love you Minnesota, but, damn, Connecticut wins.

Roll a d20 for awesome tattoos.

I finally did a new tattoo post, but this one is AWESOME and not AWFUL!
Roll a d20 for awesome tattoos
This entry is dedicated to my new d20 tattoo, inspired in part by the quote from the X-Files episode Jose Chung's From Outer Space, "I didn't spend all those years playing dungeons and dragons and not learn a little something about courage!"

You can digg it here if you are so inclined.

I know I've been neglecting posts but I promise I'll get better.

xo
Alice

Chillies - Live Tattoo Show !!

Not a vacation day.

Today (a saturday) I had off from work to sit in a Homebuyer's Workshop, which was 9 hours of sitting in a room with a bunch of mostly horrible human beings, realizing everyone's out to get you and that renting never looked so sweet. So no tattoos or art happened at all.
But yesterday I started this full black and grey sleeve, and I'm excited about it. Usually, when people come to you for a sleeve, they already have 4 ugly pieces from other people that you need to work around, but this, my friends, was a completely empty arm. And, since his only other tattoos were a huge rib piece and two massive chest pieces (all done by other tattooists), the 4 hour sitting on his arm was a breeze for him.
Todd and I printed all the backs of the girls shirt for "Never Quiet, Never Soft". The fronts will be done this week. Be ready, these are limited edition, 24 of puke green ink on army green shirts.

Heart Wings

Had a customer coming in the other day, wanting to get something with hearts and wings and with his wife's and daughters' name with it. So I set up an appointment with him and... these are the results.

Enjoy !!

Doing Up the Line-Work...

Filling in the Names...

Half-Way there...

Pain Sets in after 2hrs into it...

Filling it up with colours..

This is what we get at the end of 3rd hour... Peace out !!

One week till Philly.

The Philadelphia Convention is April 18th-22nd. I have a posse of questionable characters driving from other states (MA, CT, D.C.) to fill my schedule for the weekend, and I am excited. I am doing a bunch of crazy fun pieces from evil unicorns to rabbit butterflies, and even one of my favorite tattoos I've ever done is making a special guest appearance for a major (but funny) change.
I will have "Never Quiet, Never Soft" shirts for sale, some IWYS zines, and lots of free stickers. I just got 1000 more "I (heart) dead birds" bumper sticker in the mail today.
Today I also spent finishing my banner that will be hung behind my station at the convention. If you don't hear me first, look for the banner, and you'll find me under it.
4 ft wide by 4.5 ft tall. Cheap acrylic paint on even cheaper canvas.

twenty seven.

I'm still at work while writing this. And I'm still wearing my hat.

Meryl's sister Lindsay woke me up this morning at 6:40 am wishing me a "Happy Birthday". I don't know what time zone she thought I was in, but even if it was the same one as her, I still would have been getting my birthday zzzz's. Maybe she thought she'd be the first one of the day to say it, and win a prize, but Jeannette had that covered a few minutes after midnight last night singing the whole song (with her roomies I've never even met as backup). And we share a birthday, even, so how nice is she to think of me?

Thanks to Lobster Boy for letting me squeeze this fun Triceratops piece in between my other clients today, I was needing to do an original little something while celebrating.

Also, thanks to Todd for his triptych of me getting wild on the Dr Pepper. Click on it to see the larger version.

On the Eve of 27.

Tomorrow, April 9th, I turn 27. I got my party hat ready, and I'll rock it all day, for sure. Come stop by the shop and drink a Dr Pepper with me, I have permission to drink as many as I want from the self imposed 4 cans a day limit.
27 is good, though, it feels right. Working at Identity Tattoo is good, my newish neck tattoo belongs there, Meryl and I are buying a house in MPLS, and if I could figure out what to do in place of the missing dreds, I'd be in really good shape.

Todd's birthday was a week or so ago, and I did up this painting for him. I only finished it last night, however, and gave it to him today (still wet). He has a goat fetish, so it was an obvious choice. Oils again, (I'm really putting in an effort), and 8x10.

I got blown off today on a four hour cover up. It was going to be so dope, i did all these awesome drawings for it. I hope he went to some other shop, got it for $50 cheaper, and it looks like poop.

Snip, Snip

Thanks for all the well wishing, ranging from wonderful blog prayers to congratulation e-cards, to tyrant's text message which became the title of this post.
I'll be wearing a bag of frozen vegetables as a loincloth the next couple of days (which isn't against the dress code of Identity Tattoo), not exercising, and drinking lots of Dr Pepper. So, pretty much business as usual.