inked

Inky Ink! part 3

Continuing D‘s tattoo-saga, we have arrived to episode 3 (click here for episode 1 and here for episode 2). Nope, this is not the last episode – as we all thought – as D decided to have a full sleeve after all, so instead of a trilogy, this will be more like a ‘Young and the Restless’ series. Taking into consideration the huge amount of work John Maxx has lined up, D will most probably get his full sleeve done by this time next year. Luckily he is one of those annoying types that has infinite patience – this trait will come in handy once the little one joins our household. Not much to say in this post, besides the fact that the tattoo turned out amazing and seeing it heal so far, I can honestly say that it looks better and better every day.

The place: Radical Ink – as always!

The tattoo artist: John Maxx

If you need additional info on the place/ tattoo artist/ design, please feel free to read again Episode 1 and Episode 2 previously posted. All in all, I can’t really wait to see this entire masterpiece completed and I am sure that D is even more anxious about it, but I am sure that by the end we will be amazed by both the composition and the concept. We will keep you updated as the tattoo progresses and I hope we will not reach Episode 100 until the end. On the other hand I am anxiously waiting to be able to finish my arm tattoo (post-baby delivery) and finally finish my ‘family’ back tattoo. As you can see, next year we will get a lot of ink done and I can’t wait!

November 4, 2016

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Legs out!

I just love it when the weather is warm enough and I can switch from my regular office pants to high-waisted shorts. For some reason I’ve always loved this silhouette partly because it does miracles for people on the shorter side such as myself. It is true, legs do tend to look longer with any high-waisted pants or skirts, but if you choose a mini length and pair it with high heels, then you’ve got yourself both an hourglass silhouette and Victoria’s Secret model legs.

Officially this is my go-to attire for summer in the city. And not just starting this year, my love for these type of shorts started a few years back hence I have them in loads of colours and prints but that’s not to stop me from buying new ones. You can pair these shots with any blouse or t-shirt and converse sneakers if you’re looking for a casual outfit.

For the outfit here I chose to combine teal-green with a bit of orange. I’m happier than ever as I got to wear my Sophia Webster pumps that I got last winter from The Outnet. To match the orange tip of thse beauties, I chose my orange Furla mini bucket bag, that despite the fact that it’s small, it can fit a lot of stuff inside thanks to its shape. As accessories I only wore a Constantin Nautics bracelet alongsite my Tomorrowland and Pandora rings. Watch-wise, we both wore our Longines.

On me:
Shorts – ZARA; Blouse – Mango; Shoes – Sophia Webster; Bag – Furla; Bling – Constantin Nautics, Pandora and Tomorrowland; Watch – Longines

D also went for a teal-green outfit, without the orange, but paid with his office Tommy Hilfiger jeans. I think you’ve seen this shirt in most of our old office posts, and yes, this is the one shirt that he has in six or seven colours. You can find this incredibly soft and easy to iron shirt at H&M for an amazing price. Like me, he didn’t bother with lots of accessories either and only wore his Fossil bracelet alongside his Longines watch. The lovely shoes that he’s wearing are from Bigotti and he had to wait for them to be shipped for over a week. Do not get this the wrong way, a few weeks ago you could find these shoes in any of their stores, but it takes my man a while to decide on whether to buy something for himself or not. By the time he decided that he had to have them, there was only one store in the country that still had them in his size. I, on the other hand, am the exact opposite with more than half the things in my wardrobe bought on the spur of the moment. Do not get me wrong! I REGRET NOTHING!

On D:
Jeans – Tommy Hilfiger; Shirt – H&M; Shoes – Bigotti; Bling – Fossil; Watch – Longines

Ever since I dyed my hair blue, I tend to want to match my outfit to my locks, but this time I managed to only mildly do it with teal green. Naturally, my first instinct was to wear my blue Loubs, but I’m so glad I chose these Sophia Webster pumps as they are extremely comfortable despite the 100 mm heel.

I loved the fact that D matched my outfit and I hope we’ll be able to do this matchy-matchy game for many times to come!

June 6, 2016June 6, 2016

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Almost done…

I woke up yesterday really excited as I was getting a new tattoo and this one was my first full colour. Naturally, in the morning I had to go to work, but luckily for me, I had to wake up at 7 a.m. instead of the usual 5:15, so I was a bit more rested than usual.

This new tattoo I was getting is part of our ‘family oriented tattoos’ and I thought to myself that I had chosen the area well, considering that I found it bearable to get my ribs inked. Was I wrong…

As stated in a previous post, we always get our tattoos done at Radical Ink, and I’m not going to give you anymore details about the place as you can find all the info about our personal experiences there in D‘s post. Like I always do when in Romania, I get my tattoos done by the talented (and very patient – patience was needed yesterday) tattoo artist, Andrei Chirita. Check him out here!

I got there with a pretty clear idea in my head about what I wanted to get, D‘s fingerprint. And not any fingerprint, his ring finger. I knew it was going to be hard to do that in a watercolour style, but Andrei did a marvellous job at integrating the fingerprint into a watercolour tattoo. He found some wonderful Magnolia flowers sketched online and we decided they were perfect. I was very happy that we could integrate my ‘three’ obsession into this tattoo, because I really wanted that desperately.

Now, moving on to the concept behind the tattoo. As stated earlier, it’s D‘s fingerprint and basically three fully bloomed Magnolias. The idea behind the three-concept is that right now there’s three of us in our family (D, our dog – maybe I should do a post on her – and myself) and we will celebrate three years of marriage this year. The beautiful way that Andrei placed the fingerprint under two of the flowers, symbolises the fact that he (D) touches me and our dog profoundly. The freed Magnolia, which is placed higher than the other two symbolises himself as being the head of our small family. I guess that whole meaning behind the tattoo helped me go through it until the end, and it’s not yet done, but we have to wait for it to heal before we do any more work on it.

About the pain… I honestly thought that if I went through a quite big tattoo on my ribs, without any real issues, than this one should be relaxing. I was so, so wrong! This one has to be the most painful one I’ve ever gotten so far. Mainly I think that’s due to the fact that it’s a colour tattoo and the technique is quite different than for black and white. With colour, you have to go over and over the same area numerous times and on top of it all, the coloured ink stings like hell. Literally, at some point, I couldn’t bare anyone touching my skin. The worst part of the lower arm had to be the exact middle, as it hurt a lot less when he was getting close to either my elbow or my wrist (which is totally unnatural).

During the last hour of the session, Andrei had to actually trick me into getting more ink. I don’t know exactly how he did it, but he did and we managed to get 90% of the tattoo done. The fact that he got so far proves just what a good tattoo artist he is. I mean, he really had his work cut out with me because at some point I was moving uncontrollably on the chair, but he still managed to not get any line out of place. After about two hours, my arm doubled in size, but that’s just a normal reaction of the skin, which made it even more painful. Honestly, had I known how painful the whole are would be, I probably would’ve chosen my back for this tattoo. Do not get me wrong! Right now, looking at my arm, while writing this post, I regret nothing and I am quite proud of the fact that I managed to go through this. I just hope and pray that it will heal perfectly and that all we’ll have to do next time (in about a month) is finish all the accents that I couldn’t resist for last night.

I know that the care process is going to be extremely important and it will make the difference throughout the years. Most people use Bepanthen to care for their new ink (because it’s cheap), and I’ve done that for my first three tattoos, but ever since I discovered Sorry Mom tattoo balm (I first used it on my ribs), I will not care for them with anything else. The difference is that big! True it is a bit more expensive, but you’ll have a beautiful tattoo for life, so in my opinion it’s worth every penny.

If you’re wondering why we keep tattooing bits of each other or other things that might change throughout our lives, just remember that if there’s one thing you can’t change in life, that’s the past and we both consider our skin to be our life diary! That’s where we were at that point in our life and there’s nothing that could change that and our tattoos are a reminder of that. This is basically our motto when getting new ink and this is how we always make sure that we will not regret any of the tattoos we have on our body!

I will stop writing now as it’s not very comfortable (another thing I didn’t take into consideration when I chose my right arm, especially since I can’t do anything with my left) and probably next week we’ll post a lot less text that you’re used to, but I hope we’ll still manage to post daily or almost daily.

I hope you enjoyed my tattoo-story and soon we promise we’ll do a few posts on all our tattoos as they all have stories behind them.

P.S: Before you even go there…WE WILL LOOK FABULOUS WITH ALL OUR TATTOOS WHEN WE’LL BE 80! 😉

May 21, 2016

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Inky Ink! part 2

Ever since I was a young kid I LOVED TATTOOS. I remember being, I think, 10 years old when I used to ask my sister to paint a skull on my right arm and a Superman sign on my left (yes I was and always will be a Bon Jovi fan). This is actually my third one and I am extremely excited to have it finished. The thing is, I got my first REAL tattoo at the age of 30, pretty old considering the fact that I wanted one ever since I can remember.

The funny part about tattoos is, if you manage to convince yourself to get one, you want it done yesterday and with decent tattoo artists, that just isn’t possible. For my first one I had to wait almost one year (during which time I changed the design in my head a thousand times) to have it done, for my second one I think I waited three or four months and for my third one (this one) I had my appointment done at the beginning of November last year. What everyone who wants to get a tattoo, especially the first one, needs to understand is that research is very important. Even if you want a small tattoo it is very important to know what you want and find the right person to do it for you. For me, it will be very difficult to find another tattoo shop that matches my expectations. All my tattoos are made at Radical Ink and also L has three done here and the other three done in London.

When I woke up yesterday morning the only thing I was nervous about was the pain I had to endure on my inner arm (it is actually very relaxing not to think that the artist who will do the tattoo will screw things up). The only thing that kept me confident was the fact that I managed to have my whole lower left leg done (I will not do that on my other leg) but everyone around me was quite convinced that I wouldn’t be able to finish it. Of course, you see the photos of the end result in this post, therefore I survived the pain and lived to tell the story of my third tattoo. However, in May I’m going to add one more detail into it, therefore there will be a part three to the ‘Inky Ink’ story, but overall the whole thing is finished. This last addition is something that I decided upon yesterday when I got to the tattoo studio, so you could argue that I have to endure some more solely because of my brain. But hey, it’s going to stay with me forever so it’s worth every minute of pain!

As I think L told you, we will probably do a post on all our tattoos later this year, but not before L gets her new one in May (I don’t know if I spoiled the surprise). Anyway my personal recommendation is never go cheap and always do your research especially when it comes to your first inking.

April 20, 2016

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Inky Ink! Part 1

Yes, we have tattoos and we are proud of them! Yesterday morning I woke up anxious because D was getting his third tattoo. While that number may seem small, I have to tell you that my man goes all the way where tattoos are concerned and only gets huge ones. This one is going to be a half sleeve for now, but maybe in a few years he’ll do a full one. We both get very excited when one of us gets new ink, therefore we both were up and full of energy at 4 a.m. Unfortunately I had to go to work so I couldn’t assist him from the beginning but he made sure I was updated regularly via Whatsapp.

We each have very different views when it comes to tattoos. While for me it’s more important the meaning and the moment I’m getting my new ink, for D the appearance of the work of art is very important, that’s not to say that his tatts are meaningless as they do have a lot of meaning. The difference is that I basically view my skin as my own personal diary which means that all my tatts (six) mark a special event in my life, while his are more timeless and refer more to him and the people in his life (me included, but more on our un-matching tats later). Neither of us follows any trend when it comes to permanently ink something on us simply because trends come and go, and really, I don’t think anyone should follow the trend.

Back to Tuesday… By lunchtime (that’s the moment he actually got to the studio) I was as restless as a caged animal, but unfortunately I still had a couple more hours of work left. As a result, I started nagging him about not forgetting to take some pics of the whole process, until I got there at least.

While I found it harder and harder to concentrate at work, D kept sending me sketches, basically distracting me from work. At some point we will have a post exclusively about our tats and their meaning. Meanwhile, I managed to finish work and started my journey through Bucharest traffic towards D. Of course that all the snail-drivers decided to be on my route, which drives me nuts on a normal day, but today they literally got on my nerves! I was getting more and more excited with each traffic light and…I was finally there! The inking had started for about one hour and there was a long way to go plus another session next week, but the design and placement looked fantastic. I can’t tell you at this point which one of us is more excited to see it done, me or D. As for the pain factor usually involved with getting a tat, since D had his entire foot and ankle done last year, the upper arm seemed relaxing by comparison.

We always get our tatts done at Radical Ink in Bucharest mainly because, after a lot of research, we’ve concluded that the best artists in Bucharest are here. I usually get my ink done by Andrei Chirita (check him out!) and D’s artist of choice is John Maxx. The reason I haven’t got a piece done by him is because when I decide on new ink I want it done yesterday and John’s waiting list is about one year-long. D made his appointment last September…