Cover-ups

No one likes to admit they made a mistake. But many of us have made them and unfortunately mistakes make in ink are permanent. You may have thought Bob or Margie would be “the one”. You may have thought you’d really love Winnie the Pooh forever. Now you’ve been looking at the aftermath of those choices for too long and it’s time to do something about it. So how do tattoo cover ups work? What designs work best and are there some tattoos that simply can not be covered?

Let’s start with something you need to know about tattoos. When you get tattooed, the tattoo ink is dispersed about a millimeter under your skin and remains in a layer called the dermis, which is under the epidermis or the layer of skin you can see. When you tattoo over existing pigment you’re not covering it, you’re actually mixing the pigment of the new tattoo with the old one. As it heals the ink from your new tattoo (the cover up) will have settled into the dermis layer and merged with the old ink. Because of this it’s very important to plan carefully what the design of the camouflaging tattoo will be. I say camouflage to drive home the idea of hiding a tattoo rather that trying to pound black over the top of it to cover it. Black is the easiest way to cover an old tattoo, as well as dark colors like blues and greens, but don’t use them as a crutch. A good camouflage won’t require areas of solid black to cover an old tattoo.

A few people might wonder why you can’t just cover an old tattoo with white…well you can to an extent, but it takes time. Because the white eventually settles in the same layer as the old colors, it’s never going to make a tattoo invisible, but with patience it can really improve to final outcome of your cover.

Here is just a few of my cover-up..  If your not convinced come by the shop, and you can see more..


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