percolate & fabricate: Yeah, That's Permanent

My apologies in advance to my father, who will probably not talk to me for awhile after he sees what I have done, but it won't be the first time and assuredly not the last. So here is the story of my newest piece of art, and my first piece of body art.

Most of my college friends and my parents are probably surprised that I never got a tattoo in college. After all, I was the girl that drug all my new best friends to The Asylum our first week of college to get piercings and then back again the second week for more, but somehow I never could commit to something as permanent as a tattoo .... until today.

I have been thinking about this tat for the last couple of years. It all started when my friend Andy got "Good Luck" written on his wrist by his mom, I immediately was in love with it. It was in such a cool spot and was really meaningful, it was perfect, so what did I do .... copy it. I shouldn't say copy it, but I got pretty close in the end.

I originally wanted the phrase "Pray Continually", this comes from my favorite bible verse: "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus" (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). This verse is what I always come back to, it is my rock and has always gotten me through the tough times, it is so simple and so true. I also wanted to incorporate something personal to the verse, so I chose my Grandma Mary's handwriting. My grandparents are some of the most influential people in my life, they helped raise me and I have been so lucky to have them around me always. Unfortunately my grandparents are both gone on the Bauman side and my Grandpa Toyne has arthritis so bad that he can't move his fingers so Mary's writing will represent them all. How did I get her to do this you ask? Well, one day this spring I simply coaxed my Gram into writing the phrase "Pray Continually" down a few times, telling her it was for a project (I didn't lie, but I definitely didn't tell her exactly what the project was) and she obliged. She was confused don't get me wrong, but she did it. I decided on the wrist as my final location because I wanted to have a constant reminder of prayer, it will always be a quick visual for me to remember what I should be doing. I had also considered getting it on my ribcage under my bra, but decided to save that spot for a later design. I ended up dropping the word "continually" because it would have wrapped too far around my wrist.

I got the ink at Pink Elephant on Ingersoll in DSM by Danny, it took all of 15 minutes, and really didn't hurt except for the parts where he went over my tendon, mostly felt like a vibrating paper cut, if that makes sense. Here is what I ended up with along with some other photos, I love it! Special thanks to Nic, who kept me occupied while Danny gave me the new ink!

The original art, written by my Gram