Zoe's Birds, Aloft

I met Zoe a couple weeks ago when I spotted an incredible bird tattoo creeping up over her shoulder:

What's especially mesmerizing about this tattoo is where it begins:

Starting in the middle of her back, this flock of birds lifts up off of her flesh, and flies over her shoulder.

So from where did the inspiration for this tattoo come? Zoe explains:

"I stole the color combination and the silhouetted birds from my favorite album [Deja Entendu by Brand New].

I went in [to Name Brand Tattoo in Ann Arbor, Michigan] and gave [tattoo artist Dawn Cooke] the music and said this is why ... it helped me get through a really bad point in my life. I told her what I wanted and she figured out the placement on my body. I originally wanted it straight across my back, but she worked with my body to get it on there ... after three hours of tattooing, I asked her if she put coloring in and she did. It's all free-hand."

The tattoo took four hours in all to complete, and Zoe had nothing but praise for the artist and the shop. Name Brand, she said, "is great, super-relaxed ... they weren't judgmental [and] tend to have people with art degrees, which is really interesting." Artist Dawn Cook has moved, however, and now tattoos out of Depot Town Tattoo, in Traverse City, Michigan.

Thanks to Zoe for sharing her amazing tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Asa an added treat, here's a track from Brand New, from the album that helped inspire this body art:



This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.


If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Musician Monday: Sly's Mary Keeps on Burning

Last week, while passing through Penn Station, I ran into Sly, one of the vocalists from an up-and-coming band called Sloburn.

Sly shared this, one of her seven tattoos:

Sly explained:

"I'm more of a spiritual person. The tattoo is Mary. I'm Catholic, for one thing, but I like wearing rosaries and this is something I don't have to worry about if I forget my rosary. She's always on me. That's one of the reasons I got that, and in commemoration of my mother, who raised me that way too."

Sly credited the tattoo to Richie Richardson at Jason's Mad Tattery in Danville, Virginia.

She was in New York with Sloburn to do The Real Radio Show. Sly joked, it's Sloburn, with NO "w". "Remember," she said, "we took the 'w' out to whup your ass with."

Sloburn is a Danville, Virginia band that has been together for about four years. Sly told me that Twisted Sister's management contacted them based on a YouTube video, brought them to New York, and they are hoping to explode on the scene with their brand of, what their Facebook page calls, "redneck metal."

Here's a little Sloburn to get your blood flowing on this Musician Monday:






Thanks to Sly for sharing her cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Tattoos I Know: Mary’s Marilyn

Marilyn Monroe is a pretty popular figure to see tattooed on people. Clicking here will show you this, as well as every other post on Tattoosday that features a Marilyn Monroe tattoo. In the popularity contest, she wins by a mile.

It was with great pleasure that, a couple weeks back, one of my co-workers, Mary, got on the elevator at the end of the day, and the first thing I noticed was this fresh Marilyn Monroe tattoo, peering up at me from her right foot:

Of course, I had to ask Mary about this tattoo. Our exchange follows:

Tattoosday: Why’d you get Marilyn on your foot?

Mary: Anybody who knows me can answer that question. I love Marilyn and I wanted to put it in a spot that can showcase it without being on my forearm or my face or my neck and it seems to be a hit where it is.

Tattoosday: This is your first Marilyn tattoo?

Mary: Well, if you don’t count the mole I have. A tattoo of a mole.

Tattoosday: Oh, so that’s not a real mole?

Mary: Yes.

Tattoosday: So who is the artist?

Mary: It’s a shop that everyone in my neighborhood goes to, it’s called Eddie's Ink on Myrtle Avenue in Queens…I guess he has a following because he just moved from Brooklyn to Queens and everybody recommended him . . . it’s not like it’s in a spot that I can cover up, unless it’s winter, so I wanted to make sure it was  a good job and he went online and I told him exactly what I wanted and he found a couple of pictures and we ended up settling on this one.  I didn’t want color, I just wanted black…”.

I alluded to the popularity of the Marilyn tattoo at the beginning of the post. That said, I have to commend Mary on her originality, as I hadn’t seen one like this before. Thanks go to her for sharing this cool tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.