Seen The New Tattoo?

First off today, I thought I'd share a wee bit of the nonsense. During the holiday break, my family ventured to Monterey and for Christmas I got myself a new tattoo. While it's still far from completely healed as that takes a couple of months really, it looks pretty good, so I thought I'd share it with you. This also illustrates at least for me, the importance of a good tattoo artist as opposed to a tattooist. The artist I saw took my drawing and asked if he could work with me on the design. Thank the gods he did. He took what I had created using clip art and a pen trying to create the feeling that I had in my head and made it into this...actual art. I think it's perfect...the picture is not.

I received word back on a few different irons I posted about yesterday, so it's full speed ahead on that fence. Yeah, this is not going to make a lick of sense if you didn't read yesterday, sorry. One of those irons was a commission to make a pearl necklace 'wearable'. I was sent a sketch of what they were thinking of and I made up a little sample piece with the options and I will await the pearls to create the final piece, likely next week. This one should work up rather quickly, but at a very long length for doubling, it should also be quite a striking look and you might see a similar version without real pearls pop up in the store some time.

I know I never showed you what the last pile of ace was becoming. I wanted to wait and see whether the commissioner of that project liked it yet before I did. Well the design has been approved after some slight tweaking, that frankly I should have done in the first place. The final piece may see some crystal embellishment, but we're still on the fence with that decision. It s, my friends a face mask, designed for those who want a tatted mask but wear glasses and I still have not gotten over that design hurdle. I shaped it a bit like gas mask or a motocross mask. Sure, it has little masking powers but hey, it's lace.

Yesterday headband sample was also approved with a slight design adjustment. The entire piece will be created to widen at the center. This should be a fairly simple case of strategic stitch increases. I want the widening to be a nice, gradual increase. Does this mean that I will make a prototype and write it all down? No...that's silly, wise, but silly. I will of course just make it up as I go along. See, this is why I'm not sure I belong in any designers club. I'm like a hack who sometimes gets lucky. I don't follow any rules, hell, I don't even know what rules might actually exist. Don't worry though, I don't think I'm too good for them...I'm just too lazy to figure that all out.

Anyway, I should be busy working on all of this for a while and after I clear my plate, I've been thinking more about doing couture type pieces. After the mask, I felt such accomplishment, so I was thinking of doing a small line of similarly embellished pieces. Price them accordingly, accept that they may never sell, but may in fact inspire others and you know, get eyes into the store who might then purchase the reasonably priced items. Of course they will take much more time to create, but I suppose that's the point. I'll let you know if they ever do start to be created...one day.

Tattoo & New

Back from the coast freshly tattooed and with apparently good news. No, you don't get a good picture of the tattoo yet. I posted one on facebook and twitter Tuesday morning, it was done late Monday night, but that picture is quite bad and it was very red, swollen and well, not as pretty as it really is. So, maybe in the next few days as it looks better, I'll share a better image.

Now the apparent good news. I say this with a slight bit of trepidation because I never did hear anything back from etsy one way or the other, so I am left with guesses as to the nature of this event. On Tuesday morning, I noted that the mimics shop stood empty. Without official confirmation as to why, I was still left wondering if it would turn out to be an opossum move. Then Wednesday before I headed back to the valley, the shop had vanished. No longer does that username have an active account on etsy. Still with no official confirmation, I can only guess that it is all over. Though I also admit to some fear over possible future events. I really can't dwell on all of that now.

I would again like to say thank you to all of you who sympathized with my plight, offered advice or support or just stood by me in your thoughts. I really appreciated every bit of that and it has made this easier to deal with. I know in the wider scheme of things this was just a minor annoyance. I haven't lost my perspective or anything, but when it first happened it could hardly have been any bigger.

Onto a few more things. I did get some time to work on sequins in the hotel, but I didn't take any new pictures. As I finished up the bottom edge, I realized that I am going to have to redo that whole section. I have not gotten the proper spacing on the sequins, they were far too close together and manage to warp the bottom chains into a much less desirable shape. I will probably save that horrible cutting and retatting until the end, but it must be done. I have done the top edge, the eyes and have begun on the netted section of the forehead. Trying to get sequins to fill the empty spaces is also proving a challenge. I'm still trying to work out the best method for that to happen, but I think a break though will be coming soon.

I also have a couple of new custom project ideas on my table, but I really need to get this mask done before my brain heads in other direction. I don't want to spoil the surprise on those so I'll share them as I get to work on them. The holiday shopping season is of course over and though there is usually a smidge of the 'what I didn't get' shopping after, I should be slightly freer to get these custom things worked on. I just hope at this point I don't forget any of them. So if I'm supposed to be working on something for you and you don't hear from me...fell free to nudge me as that might be in your best interest.

Mystery Tattoo

I am an H.P. Lovecraft fan, well as much as I am a fan of anything anyway. I tend not to obsess over any one subject, but rather take from them what I like and move on. Lovecraft not only frightens me on a visceral level, his writings create such a full and dynamic reality that I often find myself believing his stories as truth. One of the concepts he shares with other pagan belief systems is the magical alphabet. This is a letter for letter replacement code that when written with deliberate strokes infuses the words with power. If you haven't gathered the connection yet, my tattoo is made with such an alphabet based on the work of Lovecraft.

The answer to, "what does your tattoo say?" is one I rarely share. During the summer the question comes out of the mouths of far too many people, most of which would probably never speak to me if their curiosity hadn't made them ignore social niceties. The requires all this background information that generally falls on deaf ears. If I choose to try and answer at all, I generally begin by questioning whether the know of Lovecraft. If the answer to that is no, I go to my old stand by, "It's a long story." If I think they might get it, I explain what I just have explained to you.

Then onto what the words are and why I choose them. Wisdom, Knowledge and Magick. Knowledge, because I spend everyday of my life in pursuit of information, anything from idle trivia to a greater understanding of the Universe. I think that a day where we have learned nothing is a waste. Wisdom, because without it, knowledge is useless. While knowledge can be obtained by anyone though many means, wisdom is only granted through experience and truly listening. Magick is a bit more complicated. I believe that everywhere we look magick exists and that it is only when we stop and look for it that it may be found. It is the unknowable that holds us all together. It is the thing that makes us wake up in the morning believing that we were meant for something more than what we seem. It is your God or gods, your universal energy and it is ignored by far too many of us.

I tattooed these words on my arm as a powerful reminder to myself of the value of these things. I hope that I am granted knowledge, wisdom and magick in my life every single day. Now you see why I don't explain them to everyone who asks, the answer is rather involved. People have said that it is folly to tattoo anything on yourself that you don't feel comfortable explaining to strangers on a regular basis. I accept that I will continue to be asked, but that doesn't mean that everyone gets the answer. So consider yourselves lucky to have heard the story because I'll not be repeating it here again, just another piece to the puzzle.

Tattooed Needle Tatter

Here we are again at personal reveal time. As it has become a custom, I shall now do a quick recap of what you have learned thus far. First I told you how TotusMel, the name was born. Then I shared my first dead dream, followed by the origin of my hair color and finally, how I met my husband. Today I shall tell you the story that gives me a reason to call myself a tattooed needle tatted by answering another question that nobody ever asked.

How did you get your first tattoo?

I think that is worth noting that by the time I was 16, I had adopted, let's say, an alternative appearance. Multi-colored hair wraps, hair of unnatural shades, and gobs of junk jewelry worn all at the same time. Underneath all of this I was just a little geek. Sure I had my fair share of drunken night, but I avoided the drugs and really had no "unsavory" friends, I just looked like I might. When the blond, rich girl that sat next to me in French class started going on about where to find someone who would tattoo a 16 year old because she assumed I knew someone, I just thought to myself that I wasn't going to allow her to get one first.

This was just the beginning of the 90's tribal tattoo, tramp stamp era, but since I didn't actually know anyone that could help me and the Internet was still sometime away from existing at my house, I set about helping myself. Using all the knowledge that television could provide, I opted for a sterilized needle and since I didn't want a "prison" ink tattoo that would fade to blue, I decided to use, and this confirms my crafting cred, fabric paint. My reasoning being that it was non-toxic. To further my geek stature I decided to place said tattoo on the top of my big toe in the shape of the Star Trek symbol. Days later the whole thing peeled off as a scab. Turns out that I did not stab deep enough and I'm left with some faint and unrecognizable splotches.

I was not going to let this setback derail my plan to have the tattoo first, so I went straight back to work. This time I placed the design on my ankle just behind the anklebone. It was a small flower that looked like a five year old had drawn it complete with red petals and a green leave, but I was proud none the less. I then proceeded to do an ankh on the other ankle.

Of course now I had another problem, my mother. I began using a ball point pen to trace over the tattoos to convince her that I was simply drawing them on everyday. After a few months I stopped and when she finally acknowledged them I flippantly retorted that I had had them for months. I do not think that she was amused, but it was too late to do anything about them.

Since then they have faded horrible and are barely recognizable and I've gotten quite a few more tattoos done right, but that's a reveal for another day. I have said for years that I will eventually get something done over them, but the truth is they have become part of my history. They are a reminder that some decisions stay with you and you can either regret them or own them. Perhaps I'll get frames tattooed around them instead to give them a place of honor rather that disgrace.