Give’em the Finger

There has been an influx!! An irritating incursion of trendy little hipsters who has the world by their fingertips and now in their infinite wisdom, would like it permanently tattooed or their scrawny little digits too. Now, I’m not here to tell you that it’s wrong, and in no way is this an expression of my love ( or lack thereof) for the above-mentioned subculture. This is just me, trying to share some light on the super trendy finger tattoos and what you should know before you do it…So give'em the finger

You may get a NO!
A tattoo artist may straight up just refuse to do a finger or hand tattoo. Lately, I’ve seen a lot of youths come into the shop and ask for a hand/finger or neck tattoo. Accompanied by their mothers (who do all the talking for them) and say:” This is my first tattoo”. I don’t know when this became a cool thing to do with parents and if you are a parent reading this, stop it! Getting a tattoo on such an extremely visible place might expose your little fedora-wearing bundle of sunshine to the stigma of having visible tattoos. Tattoo artists who are covered from head to toe, and have been in this industry for decades; consider these types of tattoos a rite of passage. On that note, if you’re sleeved up and want to go onto the neck or hands, then by all means, be my guest.

It will Fade!
The skin on our hands is very thin and moves a lot. We use our hands with everything we do and they are exposed to an assortment of chemicals and abrasive materials daily. This means that the tattoo will fade very quickly and almost all detail will be lost. Every day, we encounter clients who cannot understand why we do not want to do “a simple and small tattoo” on the finger when they see hundreds of them on Pinterest. The photos that are shown to us are all brand new and crisp. The look of utter disgust we get from clients when we tell them this terrible information can be rather comical at times. But hey, what do we know? We just do this job day in, day out…

Someone is gonna get hurt!
All tattoos hurt. Some, more than others. There are many reasons for this pleasurable pain, but nerves are the most common. There are hundreds of thousands of nerves running right through the body, sending messages of sight, smell and yes touch. Tattoos that hurt the most are generally where the skin is very thin and or sensitive due to nerves being close to the surface. I’m sure you can see where I am going with this… Our fingers are packed with these little sensitive buggers, so finger tattoos will hurt

Keep out of the Sun!
It is preferable to keep all tattoos out of the sun or at least to wear a ton of sunblock. When tattooing, the artist will deposit the ink under the skin. What we see when looking at the tattoo is ink that “shines” through the top layer of skin. If that skin gets burnt or obtains a car guard-style tan, the tattoo will start to fade, or at least look faded. This creates a colossal problem as our hands are pretty much in the sun when we go outside.

Healing is hell
As I mentioned above, we use our hands daily and it’s easy to forget about the tattoo on your finger a day or two after you got it. The problem is the mundane day-to-day task we do can severely damage your new tattoo. Things like petting your dog or putting your hands in your jean pocket. On the plus side, you can’t do the dishes for at least two weeks…