Pounded Ink

Want a tattoo really bad?  Short on cash and thinking of doing it yourself?  I urge you to reconsider. There are countless reasons not to tattoo yourself but we’ll just touch on a few of the most important ones for this article.

How Many Tattoos Have You Done Before?

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of tattooing is the ability to accurately apply a design to skin. If you’ve never tattooed before I can guarantee that your first tattoo will look like crap. Every tattooist’s first tattoo looks like crap even with the best equipment available. If you plan on tattooing yourself and you’ve never done it before be prepared to have a horrible looking tattoo for the rest of your life.

Homemade tattoo equipment is also generally of poor quality and the chance of seriously damaging tissue and creating scars is a real possibility. If you decide that your tattoo was a bad decision later in life and get it removed by laser, scar tissue does not go away. You may be left with a perfect scar of your previous home made tattoo.

Doing tattoos yourself with substandard ink could also cause your tattoo to prematurely fade leaving you with a blurry picture or a tattoo that looks old well before it’s time.

Risk Of Infection

Now that I’ve explained why you can’t tattoo yourself Ill try to stress the factor of sterilization and disease.

You need an autoclave to sterilize equipment properly. Do you have an autoclave? If you answered no, mark another check in the column for why you shouldn’t be trying to tattoo. Without an autoclave you can not guarantee complete sterilization of equipment. If needles are used more then once you risk contracting any virus the person who was tattooed before you possibly had. This means AIDS, Hepatitis, or one of a thousand other afflictions that could be present or grow on unsterilized equipment.

If you do manage to avoid contracting a life threatening virus you’re still at a high risk for developing an infection in your new tattoo. Infection can come from virtually anywhere and you should do everything you can to reduce the risk of contamination. Homemade tattoos are much more likely to get infected then a professionally applied tattoo in a sterile work environment.

My 2 Cents

I’ve seen tons of homemade tattoos and can honestly say I’ve never seen one that was really good. Even tattoos with a unique feel and design can be made into a horrible abomination of body art when someone decides to take the tattooing process into their own hands.

Tags: Tattoo