I love tattoos. Never used to, especially on women, but something very strange happened last December and now I’m almost addicted….possibly the natural endorphins though.

So I finally got around to getting my Japanese sleeve filled in. The outline took 3 hours and I’ve now had another 6 hours work done (with only 3 hours left to finish). I go to Cosmic Tattoo in Chelmsford and Aaron Burton tends to do most of the oriental style tattooing there. I went there initially for my Alfie tattoo (beloved pet dog who died in December) as Leigh Oldcorn has won many awards for his portrait work. I like Aaron, he makes me feel comfortable but don’t ever pick a fight with him because he’s a Thai Kick Boxing Champion. Aaron wasn’t very well for my appointment but insisted he just had a cold and not man flu.

If you go to Cosmic you’ll most likely witness serious banter between Aaron and Alan which, if you’re the easily offended kind, probably means you shouldn’t step foot in the place…it is a tattoo studio after all.

There’s often debate over whether outline work or filling in of tattoos hurts the most. In my experience they both hurt…more or less equally…it’s more to do with where the tattooing actually is. I estimate that tattooing around the elbow increases the pain 100% and it’s also likely to swell. On the top of the arm at the front is the most ‘comfortable’ in my opinion but then I had eaten a lot of gluten by then – deliberately as this makes me very sleepy, almost knocks me out – so I could just have been a bit delirious by this point.

Six hours is a long time to be tattooed for and 5 hours in I was at the ‘I’m gonna cry’ point in the day. Luckily (or did he realise?) Aaron decided to stop just after that…I did notice he had begun to hold my arm a bit tighter – possibly because he feared I might jump in pain by this stage.
Anyway, despite being really quite unwell, Aaron did a fab job, I am so very pleased with my phoenix….I love her  I just can’t wait to get it finished now (January 2015) if it’s entirely possible, that is, to be excited for the experience of quite a bit more pain? You can guarantee I shall never be looking for laser tattoo removal.