Healed tattoos

There is a big lack of knowledge regarding healing and the look of a healed tattoo. Customers often are mislead by the fact that all they can ever find online, are images of fresh tattoos with the black ink looking deeply dark and the colours radiant and bright. We need to remember that a tattoo is ink which is embedded into your skin, a living breathing and ever changing organ. Your skin heals a tattoo, which it perceives as a wound, by producing collagen and therefore growing new layers of skin ontop of the harmed skin. This way the ink gets locked in, and lives underneath your new skin layers for ever. Imagine it like a scar, which normally would have the colour of your skin, but instead has the colour of ink because it grew and healed, with ink in it. This is probably the easiest way to explain it, without diving into dermatology terms. 
Now your skin is obviously not transparent, it has a colour, and your tone is made of 3 layers, the epidermis, dermis, and the hypodermis. Imagine 3 sheets of parchment paper ontop of each other. If they're light beige in colour, you put them ontop of eachother and it will become a rich beige. If all three are a light brown, all 3 together create a rich brown. Etc. now we take a dark blue pencil and draw onto the second sheet of paper, and put the third one on top. The paper is see through, but the drawing will still look slightly muted due to the colour of the paper. That's the concept of a healed tattoo. The ink will look visible and lively when healed, however always slightly muted due to the hypodermis ontop of it. Your skin will stretch, shed, get try, then moisturised, maybe experience impact or trauma, and constant change with the years. The ink particles in your tattoo will be a constant companion, changing with you ever so slightly, and aging with your skin. I think it needs to be looked at as a beautiful thing, a process that really shows that your tattoo has become part of you, your body and your life. Maybe some small deinty lines won't heal as well as the rest of it, maybe some detail will get lost. For some of these things you can always come for a touch up, but for some it is better to leave them alone. Ink will spread a tiny bit with time, as your skin expands and changes. That is also the reason why tattoo artists always preach about tattoos being too tiny, too deinty and too light. A tattoo needs a certain amount of space to breathe and expand when healing, so that the ink has space to still look good when its embedding itself in your dermis. The most important phase of healing are the first 2 weeks post tattoo appointment. The tattoo needs to be kept clean, slightly moisturised (please check my Aftercare section for advice) to help a smooth closing of the harmed skin and avoid itching. The hypodermis, the top layer of your skin, will be healed and recovered within 2 weeks, due to our body's incredible ability to produce collagen in self defence. The dermis however needs longer, up to 2 months to heal underneath. There's not much you can do to help it, except avoid impact and stress to your skin, and keep moisturising once in awhile, drink plenty of water and eat healthy (at least sometimes). 

Healing scar coverups 

Scar coverups have a very special place in my heart. I started offering this service many years ago, and have come across so many wonderful people through it. I've done coverups for mastectomy scars, burns, skin drafts, accidents, surgeries. But the ones that seem to have the biggest impact are the coverups of self harm scars. It is a delicate and sensitive topic, and it takes people a lot of courage and confidence to make the step to have their scars covered. This almost never happens out of shame, and it shouldn't, it happens because they are ready for a new chapter. The scars will always be there, a tattoo doesn't let them disappear magically. And maybe that's a good thing. I always use florals, any type of botanical design to cover them. That's mainly because it works very well for what I do, but it also symbolises such joy, new beginnings and most importantly, life. Our skin is very sensitive and thin where scarred. Which is why when scars get tattooed, the penetration of the needle makes the skin go in full defence. Freshly tattooed scars are at least 3 times more raised than before, red, angry, and throbbing. All though most customers report it not actually hurting any more than on unharmed areas. Skin being the magical thing that it is, it goes into full panic repair mode, because the already harmed skin is being repeatedly punctured by the tattoo needles, and that's where the magic happens. It produces so much collagen in its "panic", that once healed, the cars are way smoother than before. All of my scar coverup customers have reported this happy side effect to me. If you are considering getting your scars tattooed, you can always email and ask any questions you like. I know it's a big deal, and I'm here to help. 

Below you can see a collection of photos of healed works of mine. New tattoos, large and small, as well as scar coverups. I hope this little dive into tattoo healing and the photos, will give you an idea of the process and what to expect.

* the photos are a mix of regular tattoos as well as coverups. I feel very strongly about the fact that scars on human skin should not have a trigger warning, despite the fact that some people do not agree. These are real people, and they should not ever feel like their body needs a trigger warning just for existing.