I spent a few bucks and finally got the cover up tattoo I have been avoiding for some time. Here is a little background on it..
The year is 1995. I am a young punk and want to get a tattoo across my stomach. I invite over an old friend who was pretty good at drawing. I had build a home made tattoo gun out of a pen, tape player motor, a cheap remote from a remote control car, button, guitar string and a double A battery. This is the same setup used in most prisons. Don't ask how I know about these. Well, literally 25% of the way in, my mother walked in on us. Needless to say she wasn't happy! That ended the tattoo right then and there. I was 15 and walking around with a 25% of a shitty tattoo on my stomach.
Zoom to 2003. I am not 23 and vacationing in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. My buddy, who originally invited us, suggested I finally get the original 25% covered up with a new tattoo. I had been putting it off for so long because it _really_ hurts on your stomach. I figured why not, the time is right, I might as well get it over with. We ended up meeting this guy who also happened to be from Southern California and owned a tattoo parlor in town. I go down, meet the artist, agree on a pattern & price and get to work. About two hours later, I was done, and not very happy. My cover up, was horrible and would require a cover up :(
On to Apr. 26th, 2007. I am visiting family in Albuquerque. There is an awesome tattoo artist here named Dave Martinez. He is well known in the tattoo community and has also done 2 tattoo's on me before. I wanted to get a cover up for my cover up and finally end the humiliation. It's been a few years since I had Dave give me a tattoo and apparently, his star is really rising. His rates more than doubled and he is completely booked up until OCTOBER! Ouch! I didn't give up. There is a second shop that I heard a lot of good things about, it is called Route 66, Fine Line Tattoos. I went by and consulted with Gilbert Vasquez. I had the idea to use a centaur in some sort of "mist" so everything that needed to be covered up, would be. I had my father in law draw me up a pattern. He is an awesome artist! He came up with a centaur in about 20 minutes. I had an appointment with Gilbert the next morning at 11am.
It's the next morning, 11 AM. I have been dreading this for some time. I do remember how much it hurt the first 2 times I attempted this on my stomach. About 20x more intense than on my arm, back, chest, etc. We had scheduled a 4 hour session to knock it out. I wasn't nervous, just anxious to get it over with. Gilbert knocked it out in 2 hours, 45 minutes. Result? F'n awesome! Very happy with the results! You can see the photo of it on my flickr account.
I will post more pictures in a few weeks once its completely healed. I should have taken "before" pictures so you can see what an amazing job he really did! Doh!
This was a long and rambling post, sorry about that. Just thought it was funny to tell how it all worked out. Beat up tattoo as a teen, worse cover up, and finally the huge tattoo needed to fix it all. Eesh!