Virginia's Flowers Forecast Spring

This is a quick one for Monday morning, on the last day of February, with spring looming just around the corner. Here's one of Virginia's tattoos:

Virginia is a long-time reader and fan of Tattoosday who I have met on anumber of occasions. This is the first piece she has shared with us.

This floral tattoo is at the top of her right shoulder and was done by Craig Rodriguez at Hand of Glory in Brooklyn.

She explains further, "We are all hoping for an early spring. Daffodils and forget-me-nots. It is a memorial tattoo. I always bring yellow flowers to the cemetery when I honor my family members."

Work from Hand of Glory has appeared previously here on Tattoosday. A piece of Craig's was featured here.

Amen to the early spring! Thanks to Virginia for sharing this lovely tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

One Last Friday the 13th Post, for Melanie

So one of my friends Jenise had contributed to the Great Friday the 13th Tattoo Experiment and her votes for my tattoo were not along the finalists.

She was also keenly aware that we collected $31 in donations for my tattoo, $11 more than needed. Ginger, another friend, had added a dollar to the kitty for my lovely Friday-the-13th born wife Melanie, so Jenise, in an effort to make the experiment a complete success, chipped in the funds to bring us to an even $40, and she, Ginger, and Melanie separately concurred that this design was the one for her:

Much to our surprise, when we went back at 6:00 pm, business was brisk but it was only a 30-minute wait.

Artist Joey Wilson tattooed the Zoe Sonenberg-designed flash piece right below Melanie's $14 Valentine's tattoo (that story here).

The end result is lovely:

Thanks again to all contributors and supporters of Tattoosday through this process, and for everyone's patience while I went "off-book" for the last couple of days.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Tattoosday's Trip to Hand of Glory

As alluded to in the previous days' posts, I got a little carried away with a Friday the 13th tattoo experiment and opened up the idea to readers who contributed the funds for a tattoo ($13 special plus lucky $7 tip).

I had seven people send me money (thank you Ginger, Jen, Sean, John, Jenise, Janet and Nicole!) and then vote on the design out of five sheets of flash (seen here).

the flaw in my plan was not collecting the money, but dealing with the votes. I asked everyone to vote for three choices, and assigned 5 points to 1st choice, 3 for 2nd and 1 for 3rd. Fifteen different designs were selected, and only four were selected twice.

The winner was this classic, simple design by Derik Snell:

I was early and first in line, so I got the first tattoo of the day at Hand of Glory's sister shop, down the block, called The End is Near.

Brian Faulk was the assigned tattooer and he made quick work of the design:

Photo by Zoe

The end is result is a little messy, but it should heal nicely:

Thanks to all the kind people at Hand of Glory/The End is Near for their help this morning. I am planning on returning later with Melanie for her addition. We'll see how it goes....