I Heart my Ink

So about 11 years ago I got my first tattoo, it was a dolphin on my left shoulder. It cost me $60 bucks and I did it on a spur of the moment, actually one of my closest friends and I decided as we were driving down Charleston to stop at a tattoo shop and just look, next thing I know she's getting her boyfriends name tattooed on her lower back and I'm staring at a really cute dolphin that I just had to have...does it matter that we were only 19 at the time? **by the way she broke up with her boyfriend 2 days later and his name is now a giant tribal band on her lower back**

My second tattoo came only 4 months later and am proud to say still looks good, however I did walk around with it as an outline for about 3 years before it was finally colored. The story on that goes something like this....I heart this baby dragon sleeping...I have to have it tattooed on me!! So, my ex-hubs made friends with a tattoo artist who was just opening a shop, they struck up some deal and an artist named BOOM gave me my dragon on my right shoulder, I sat like a champ for 4 hours with only one break! 2 months later I find out I'm preggers, so much for color! Flash forward 3 years, I am at a good friend of mine's concert, they are giving away a $100 gift certificate to the tattoo shop where I got my dragon, I win! 2 weeks later my dragon has color :).

The red dragon is the one that is 11 years old :)
The big purple dragon is covering my dolphin :)

My back has now undergone a complete transformation! My dolphin is gone, covered by another dragon and I now have a whole fantasy land that starts at the top and goes all the way down to the top of my tail bone. Most of the inspiration for what you see is based on Amy Brown, she's a well known artist that draws and paints faeries and dragons and other awesome creatures. My tattoo artist that designed the whole piece with me is Terry Oakes, she used to work at State of The Art Tattoo here in Tucson, but is now on her own. She and I have become pretty close through this whole process and I hope that she and I will remain close now that it's complete. The total time in hours that I sat for this piece was 80-90 over the course of a year. I have a total of 7 tattoos, I count my back piece as one because it's all connected, if I was to count each piece seperately it would add up to about 22 tattoos total...lol..

Here is my ink that I am so proud of...

**sorry about the flash..it's hard to take pics of my back without help..lol**