Yeah, right away, I did not get a REAL tattoo. Let’s be clear about that. My wife who is far braver than me has 4. Maybe someday I will, but not today.

This all started with Otis.

At Christmas time he gave us all little gift packages. Inside were some temporary tattoos.

Check out Artworking and Danny’s page:      http://artworking.org/artists/dan-severson/

Pretty awesome. Thanks again Otis.

I was going to put one on and wear it to work some day and show Otis, but it’s been cover up season, especially here in Wisconsin. However, I kept seeing them on my desk and it got me to thinking. How are temporary tattoos made?

You would think it would be a complicated and potentially expensive process. Turns out, not so. You can buy temp tat paper from Amazon! So I did.

What came next was a hunt for images for 2 sheets of temporary tats for Cindy for Valentine’s Day. I picked Slytherin, Hearts, Celtic designs, Daisies, Thimble and Acorn and Thompson 12/27/2019 in Harry Potter font. Then I had to put them all in a program where I could lay them out and try to use all the space before printing them out.

Knowing what I know now I would have done it a bit different, but I guess there IS a learning curve for creating temporary tattoos.

I ended up with about 15 for her, and well… a few for me.

Those are Bowie and a Celtic Dragon for good measure.

Yes they are reversed. Turns out I had to reverse all the images because they of course are applied backwards. So I had to redo them all. Glad I figured that out before I printed on the actual paper.

Once I had everything set and ready to print, the rest was easy. Just print and apply the clear sheet on top of the printed sheet and cut them out.

Now that Valentine’s is over (hi Valentine!) I decided to try one out. I chose the dragon.

It came out like crap and when I bent my arm it fell off. I was bummed. Turns out though I was just dense. I applied the wrong part to my arm. Cindy showed me the RIGHT way to put it on with one of hers. PAPER part goes onto the skin. The clear sheet is just to protect the image. Yeah. Dense.

Hers came out great!

So, I decided to try it again with the Bowie with letters since I have 2.

I peeled the clear covering (thanks Cindy) and applied the paper to my arm, waited a minute and then peeled it off.

Booyah. It worked. So you can see some shine from the paper backing medium, but overall I am kind of impressed.

I know there are a million people with REAL Bowie tattoos out there who would laugh their butts off at this post. I was having fun though. Baby steps.

Looks good at a distance.

Which is how I like to keep pain.

Maybe someday though…

You never know.