April 19 marks tattoo day and my second session for my cover-up chest piece. I'm happy to report that the last three and a half weeks have been complication-free in my healing process. I did a lot of things differently than I have in the past with new tattoos and I feel like all of those steps resulted in fast healing time, minimal shedding and a beautifully rich tattoo heal. I'll go over my healing process in another post when I review Hustle Butter products.
In my last post, I talked about how faint I was feeling after my three-hour long line session. This time around I did more research on how I could better prepare myself to avoid this:
3 Easy Steps To Prepare for Your Tattoo
Sleep - a good night's sleep of 6-8 hours is key to rejuvenating your body and having your immune system relatively prepared for the shock it's about to receive.
Hydration - drinking plenty of water on the days leading up to your appointment helps keep your skin nourished from the inside out. Add extra hydration by routinely applying moisturizing, dermatologist recommended lotions.
Food - Do NOT go on an empty stomach. If your session is longer than 2 hours prepare yourself with a small meal, such as a sandwich, and snacks. Sugary snacks seemed to help me more than anything and I opted for Mott's fruit snacks along with bottled water.
Upon arrival, the shop felt a little busier than before as two other tattoo artists were gearing up for clients as well. It was nice to watch others getting ink to distract me from my own painful situation XD
Kayla was kind and considerate as ever. Unfortunately, she was under the weather a bit that day and graciously offered to wear a surgical mask for my safety if it made me more comfortable. I didn't mind but was grateful for her taking extra health precautions. Throughout my session she stopped to freshen herself up, wash her hands and apply fresh gloves. She got to work right away on the left side in covering up my scorpion. Within the first 15min it was officially gone. Adios!
In my healing process I contacted Kayla and let her know I experienced a bit of blowout with some of my tattoo lines. I learned that this could happen on thinner skinned areas due to application being too deep. I was grateful to know that my blowouts were not bad and would be easily hidden with the shading that would follow. I later learned Kayla was filled with dread upon hearing this, but we both were greatly relieved to see that it was an easy fix. :)
My beautiful omamori floral chest piece all complete! I adore it :)
In total, this tattoo session was about two and a half hours. Making my entire chest piece tattoo about 5.5 hours. The same parts that had me clinching in pain the first time, (the very center where my tassel rope runs) did again on the second run. This time, Bactine spray was used to take the bite out of the shading needs, which gave me some relief. However, I can confidently say the outline process of my first session, hurt way worse than the shading! With the frequent breaks, sipping water throughout and utilizing my snacks, I felt great upon leaving the studio.
I also got a little bonus tattoo. Did you know that you can ask for a color test tattoo, free of charge? This is a small tattoo to test out which colorful inks will show up and heal well on your skin tone. I'm looking forward to seeing how the magenta, red, green and orange heal up on this tiny secret ankle tattoo :P In the future, I'd love to incorporate color into my ink.
I am over the moon for my new chest piece and gladly kiss the old scorpion tattoo goodbye. It's covered so well I barely notice it was there. I'm in love with Kayla's work and look forward to working with her again to fix the rest of my terrible ink jobs. I have so many ideas!