First thing’s first, your tattoo artist should have taken time to wrap a bandage around your tattoo. Basically what you’ve got is a fresh wound, and it can be easily infected. Leave the bandage on for at minimum two hours, no matter how tempted you are to take a look or show off to your friends. Some artists may cover your new art in saran wrap. This does nothing but suffocate the skin and should be removed right away. It really does nothing to protect the skin.

After taking the bandage off, you should wash the tattoo area. Use tepid water and a mild soap and gently wash it with your hand. Any kind of washcloth may be too harsh. You’re washing away ointment that might have been used to treat the tattoo, plasma, and blood. Be very gentle, and be just as gentle when drying it off. Light dabs with a clean paper towel should do the job, but whatever you do, don’t rub it dry. Use lotion after that to keep the skin hydrated. Products like Eucerin or Lubriderm should do the trick.

Stay away from hot tubs or swimming pools, but showering with your tattoo is fine. You don’t want it submerged under water for any amount of time for the first couple of weeks.

After a few days your skin might start to scab and peel. Some scabbing is normal, but excessive scabs could mean a badly done tattoo. Apply warm compresses to the scab and they should come off on their own. Whatever you do, don’t scratch or peel them off. If it’s really itchy, use some lotion.

Finally, keep your tattoo from too much sun. You should protect your skin anyway with at least SPF 30 sunblock if you’re out in the sun a lot, but a tattoo can fade, even after it’s fully healed. Keeping the area covered with lots of sunscreen will keep it vivid and colorful for years to come.

To all my friends and family of Mexican heritage, have an awesome day! As much as I like to blog about Irish Claddagh tattoo designs and Celtic tattoo designs, you’ve got to recognize there’s some really fantastic ink out there of Mexican tattoo art.

Cinco de Mayo (which literally means “Fifth of May”) is a special date that commemorates the Battle of  Puebla in 1862 where the Mexican army defeated the French. Today it’s mainly a celebration of Mexican pride in their culture and heritage.

Apparently, he’s known for thinking he’s a big shot by other players in the NHL, and even Don Cherry, a CBC Hockey commentator went on record in a radio interview saying he’s known Avery since he was a kid and thinks he’s a total jerk.

I don’t really follow hockey, so I didn’t know this, but one time he was in Canada to play against the Calgary flames, and two of the guys on that team were dating ex-girlfriends of his, Elisha Cuthbert and Rachel Hunter. Avery gets on camera, talks about how great it is to be back in Calgary and how it’s funny that other hockey players are going for his “sloppy seconds”! D’oh!

So after all these shenanigans he went through some kind of image makeover, and part of that was the  forearm tattoo with the Radiohead lyric, presumably to remind him to not be such a  jerk!

We stopped at Bud’s tat shop downtown so I could get Moira her birthday present. If you hadn’t guessed from her name, she is an Irish girl. She moved here for college from a town called Killarney and just ended up staying here. I hope she never leaves because she’s so much freaking fun!

So I told her, get whatever you want, it was on me. She was looking at the tribal designs more than anything else, but really didn’t find anything that tickled her fancy. I guess she assumed she’d find a design there that would really jump out at her, but nothing really did.

This happens a lot, like when you’re in the tattoo shop it’s so hard to decide. So we borrowed Bud’s PC and he had a membership to some website where you could see all kinds of tattoo designs. You would not believe the number of tattoos on this website, I was about to get down on the chair and get a new one myself. The designs on this site were just awesome.

So she found an really cool Irish flag tattoo and went for that. She got it done on her right shoulder blade area and I was so proud of her, she barely squirmed even though this is her very first tat. Normally I’m not into flag designs, but trust me this thing is sick. I’ll have to post a picture.

I’m going to have to call Bud and ask him the name of that website. It might have been a special members only thing or something. Whatever you like, this site has them all and the designs are just awesome.  I sometimes  just browse google images, but that’s nothing. This is something else completely and I could just look through it all day long.

After that we headed out to Moira’s place on 5th. Man, her place is awesome. I don’t know how she found it. It’s totally affordable and a really decent size for being a studio. I love hanging out there, it’s so cozy. While she got ready I chilled out and watched some TV.

We headed out of town to my friend Dan’s place for her birthday party. She had a blast, I don’t think she expected nearly so many people to show. We got her a cake and everything, and Dan we had some pretty nice grub from the Mexican place down at Dan’s, El Taco or something like that.

She showed off her new Irish tattoo to everybody, all of us suitably impressed even though it was still pretty irritated and bleeding a bit.  I hope every time she looks at it in the mirror she remembers what an awesome 25th birthday party she had!

People ask me if it hurt and my girlfriend was all upset about how painful it looked and she couldn’t even watch it getting done. I tell them no, it really isn’t that bad!

There’s the initial pain, but after a while you’re kind of numb to it. I guess it makes a difference where the ink is being done and if you’re overweight or not, but I was really pleased it went okay!

Now the other more intricate stuff I added later is a different story! Covering my whole calve and shin with a lot of coloring as well was done over a period of weeks. I was always looking forward to going to my tat guy to get it worked on, but man it hurt! I’d usually just zone out to the music playing, and the chairs are super comfy.

Armband tattoos can be a pain too. Seriously. It’s not so bad on the front but when the needle hits the soft fleshy part under your arm, watch out!

Of course, it’s totally worth it. Now with my tattoos of crosses and celtic knot tattoos complete, I get a ton of compliments every time I go out with my buddies.

My girlfriend even went and got one. She got a small cross she found in a book of  Scottish tattoo designs. I’m not all that fond of it, but she liked it enough. In a later post I’ll tell you some really great places to find tattoo art instead of relying only on what’s on the walls of the tattoo shop.

A claddagh tattoo not only looks cool, it has meaning. It is from an Irish ring with the tradition that it’s given to someone to show love or for a wedding ring. The tradition started in a village in Ireland called Claddagh.

The design is of two hands holding heart with a crown on top, which are supposed to symbolize love, loyalty, and friendship.

As a ring, it’s worn to show if someone’s taken or not. If you wear the ring on the right hand with the heart facing out, it can mean they’re available. If the heart faces in, they are taken. If it’s on the left hand with the heart out, it can mean engaged, and turned in it would mean married.

I’m not sure how accurate this all is, but it sounds nice!

When Irish immigrants came to America, the design came with them, and it spread everywhere and you can find the ring and the design everywhere now. When Jim Morrison, the singer in The Doors, got married he and his wife exchanged Claddagh rings.

In the 1990′s it might have been referred to as the Buffy ring because on the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the main character wore one during her relationship with Angel. I love that show!

Wedding ring tattoos are pretty popular these days. Colin Farrell, Jenna Jameson and Pamela Anderson all got rings tattooed right on their fingers.

I’ve also heard of people getting these done with the intention that eventually when they can afford a real ring, it’ll go over the tattoo that is just a kind of placeholder, but I think they look better than real jewelry.

I spent ages trying to figure out which design I wanted. Tattoos are forever and you want to get something you really like! Imagine looking at your arm twenty years down the road and saying “Man, what was I thinking?”. I didn’t want that to be me!

When you start thinking about tattoo styles and designs it can seem like there’s way too many choices. If you don’t spend any time thinking about it and just walk into a tattoo shop to get one, you might end up with something you don’t like after all.

I was thinking of maybe going for a shamrock tattoo because my family is Irish, but I didn’t want it to look like I was a basketball fan. I thought about dragon tattoos as well because I’ve always really liked them, but really wanted to stay with the celtic theme.

One thing I personally wanted to avoid was a name tattoo. I love my girlfriend and everything, and one day I’d really like a celtic wedding ring tattoo, but until that day, anything can happen! I have a friend who had to go for tattoo removal to get his ex-girlfriend’s name taken off his left butt cheek! He said the removal was more painful than the act of getting inked itself!

So I decided eventually on the claddagh symbol tattoo because I never got tired of looking at it, and I love it to this day. It represented my family’s culture and lineage,  without being far too obvious, and it looks great!

Tattoos are a very personal thing and deciding on one can be so hard, but if you take the time to make the right selection, you’ll love it for the rest of your life. I love my Claddagh tattoo!