tattoo #2

I spent much of my New Year's Eve at a tattoo shop in Austin, with my sisters and mother, getting matching tattoos in honor of my brother.

Jenny, Criss, and I had first talked about doing a sibling tattoo back in July, intending to try to get it done while we were all in Austin at that time, but couldn't get it together with a design and schedule. So we kept talking about it the past few months, settled on something we all liked and set about researching tattoo artists. We settled on Darryl Hanna from Golden Age Tattoo, who had an awesome portfolio and got back to us right away, excited about our idea and working with us. We all planned to be in Austin again for Christmas and New year's, so we scheduled our appointment for Dec 27th. 

Early last month I told our mom about our plans. I was a little worried about what her reaction would be-- she's never liked tattoos. But she was genuinely touched by us wanting to do this as our tribute to JC, and said she would love to come along with us to see it happen. 

As it turned out, Darryl got food poisoning on the 27th so had to cancel, but he was awesome about making sure he still fit us in since he knew we had a deadline, and was able to reschedule for the 31st. We spent a good 2 hours hashing out the final design, then got to work. Mom was there, and admitted that she had been considering joining us in getting a tattoo as well, but had apprehensions about our placement and the size. Darryl was amazing through this whole process-- both working with us to settle the original design, asking questions to help us clarify what we wanted, advising us on what would work and what wouldn't, and being patient as we went back and forth. Then he talked with Mom while he was tattooing us to help her decide what she wanted to do, and how to alter the design to work for her (placing it higher up on her arm, and slightly smaller size).  And then she went for it, rock-star Mom that she is. 

Brave Jen, going first.

The "after" shot (taken the next day).

So, the design: we drew inspiration from a few of JC's favorite things... the death star is for him, the smaller stars remind me of the ones on the Harry Potter pages and represent us three sisters, and the quote by Carl Sagan just ties it all together really nicely. Fun fact: that is my handwriting.