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We are human, which means we are bound to make mistakes. All kinds of mistakes. And while some of these mishaps are small and easy to fix, others are a little bit more... permanent. Today, let's talk about the latter category.

Some time ago, a Reddit user u/Sorceress683 hit up the AskReddit community inviting tattoo artists to share stories about the worst mistakes they've ever made on a client. The question quickly gained quite a bit of attention as it currently has almost 47K upvotes. The community members did not hesitate and opened up about some of the most embarrassing, cringiest, and funniest tattoo error stories they've ever heard or been fortunate enough to experience themselves. With that being said, Bored Panda invites you to read through our favorite ones.

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Source: Wikimedia Commons

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#1

I was a receptionist at a tattoo shop. One of the artists misspelled “neighborhood” on this guys neck. He spelled it “neigborhood”, leaving out the first “H”. Neighborhood was the guys nickname. It was a pretty large, elaborate tattoo so there was no fixing it. I don’t think I have ever cringed so hard in my life. The guy was surprisingly really cool about it. He did see the drawing and approved it before it was tattooed on. He ended up making the artist tattoo a “H” on his palm so if anyone gave him crap about the misspelling he could smack that person with the missing “H”.

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#2

I tried to tattoo "PATIENCE" on myself when I was 16,using the stick and poke method. I made it as far as "PATIEN" and stopped. I never finished it. Eventually got it covered up when I was 28. Literally didn't have the patience to finish it lol. It was a funny story to tell for all those years, and a lot of my friends were disappointed in me for covering it. But I have no ragrets

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#3

Once had a client call the shop who was crying hysterically because, according to her, I had done her tattoo backwards. It took a few minutes to get her to calm down to the point where we realized she was looking at it in the mirror. She apologized and hung up. The tattoo was on her back. When I placed the stencil, and finished the tattoo, the client was using two mirrors. A handheld one, and the wall mounted one. Using two mirrors, it looked correct (which it was). When she looked in just one mirror at home, it appeared backwards, the way a mirror works.

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#4

Worked as a piercer in a shop a decade ago. A guy came in and wanted "Murphys law"...the artist freehanded a design on him, he green lit it after watching in the mirror and they did a beautiful piece with a banner saying "murpys law". Seemed fitting. The guy loved the fact that his one messed up tattoo was the murphys law one.

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Manta
Manta
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That’s honestly iconic and the guy could probably get away with telling people that was done intentionally. 10/10 great mistake

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#5

I had a client email me asking for a four-letter acronym. I don’t do freehand script so I put the letters into a font generator and sent him back some options. He picked the one he liked best and we set an appointment date. On the day of his session, I showed him the acronym again and we chose a size. I placed the stencil and he approved it and I got started. Midway through the tattoo I asked him what the letters stood for and he told me. My heart stopped. The letters were in the wrong order. The middle two were swapped. I ran to the shop computer to check my email and sure enough, in his original email he’d sent me, they’d been correct. I had typed them into the font generator wrong. But to be fair, he had seen them several times since then and didn’t notice my mistake. I spent the rest of the session covering them up with another design he’d had as a backup tattoo idea and I didn’t charge him. But it was a good learning experience for me to always ask what initials/acronyms stand for ahead of time to make sure I get them in the right order.

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#6

I had been tattooing on human skin for no more than two weeks and was very inexperienced. My mentor wanted me to participate in a $13 Friday the 13th flash special coming up that week. I drew up a flash sheet full of designs that I was confident I could pull off with my limited experience. I spent the entire day beforehand prepping my station, gathering supplies, printing stencils and consent forms, cleaning the entire shop, etc. I decided to sleep on the shop floor that night so that in the morning I could buy the whole shop some fancy donuts from a nearby cafe and get back in time for the event. Right before it started my mentor, who was also the shop owner, changed up the rules of the special. He announced on Instagram that people could bring in whatever small design they wanted to get done for $13. I was suddenly being asked to draw and tattoo designs that I was fully unprepared to take on. The shop had one computer with photoshop that we all had to take turns on to create designs so our turn-around time slowed to a crawl. (And I already tattooed slow anyway since I was so green) The shop was overflowing with people and we had a waitlist with literally over 100 names.

Just as we were about to close up shop at 2am, one girl walks in and asks if she can still get in on the special. She wants a butterfly. My mentor tells me to take care of it. I’m exhausted but hey, you don’t tell your mentor no. So I print the stencil and I get started and.... my hands just stop functioning. My wrists were so sore and cramped from working all day that I couldn’t control the tattoo machine anymore. It was the strangest, most horrible feeling. I watched in horror as, no matter how hard I tried to tame my gnarled hands, I just completely botched this girl’s tattoo. Lines were all squiggly and off. I even cut into her arm in some places. Lots of bleeding. I felt absolutely horrible. It looked horrendous.

I called another artist over to finish the tattoo for me and told the client that her tattoo was on the house. She left without saying much. We closed up shop after she left and I told the other artists to go on home while I stayed behind and cleaned up. I cried as I cleaned. I made only enough money that day to cover the price of the stupid donuts. By the time I was done cleaning it was 3:30am and I still had to ride my bike a few miles home. I was so tired that I decided to spend a second night sleeping on the shop floor. I woke up early the next morning to ride home... and the rear wheel had been stolen off of my bike. I had to carry it two miles to the nearest bike shop and spend $90 on a new wheel, tire, and cassette. I thought that was the end of that nightmare until... A week later I’m at home and get a call from my mentor. He’s SCREAMING through the phone. Apparently the butterfly girl went and left a 1 star review of the shop on Google after her experience with me. He said I had disgraced the name of his shop and the other artists that worked there. I had to come in the next day and apologize to each of them personally for damaging their reputations. I then had to contact the client and apologize once again to her and offer her another free tattoo. She never responded. The whole experience was humiliating.

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John C
John C
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wow, that's a hard story to read, so sorry you went through that! Learning when to say when and finding your limits is a lesson we all have to learn, often in spectacular and embarrassing fashion. Looks to me like you have the right perspective on it tho - I'd get inked by you (so long at it's not 2am after a long day of $13 specials). :)

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#7

When I was but a wee baby piercer, I worked at the biggest shop in my city which had 14 artists and 2 piercers. It was the peak of the tramp stamp trend (I'm still so sad that was the nickname, ass antlers was so much better) so when a super tiny 18 year old black woman came in and wanted her name on her lower back with a flower it was just normal. An older white male tattoo artist took her to pick a font, it took a minute (even though back then everyone went with Edwardian) but they came out, I had her do paperwork and he got the drawing finished. She okayed the design, she okayed the stencil, she sat for the tattoo, loved it, tipped him and left.

Two hours later she called back sobbing saying we ruined her life. The counter girl told her to come in and we would fix whatever was wrong. Tattoo comes back with her two gigantic, angry af friends who are ready to freak out. We finally see the tattoo.

Her name was Whitney. The "n" got left out in the font process. So huge across her lower back it said "Whitey"....... It was covered for free and with many apologies with three giant purple roses. The tattoo artist was so fu**ed up over that he didn't come in for a week. It was an honest mistake, but it was the worst fu**ing spelling error I've seen.

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#8

I misspelled “forward”. It was a line of script on the side of a foot, and a last minute addition to a couple other tattoos they were getting. I quickly knocked it together on photoshop and nothing looked out of place, the client approved, so I made the stencil.

The real fu**up is that I didn’t ask them to spellcheck... I ALWAYS ask them to spellcheck, except for this ONE time...

The next day they came back and pointed out that forward isn’t spelled “foreword”. I do a lot of reading and I guess it didn’t look wrong because I’m used to seeing it as the “foreword” of a book. I apologized profusely, feeling like a total a**, and told them to pick at the scab of the extra “e” and the “w” while they were healing (to make it fade) and come back in two weeks.

Fixing the O was easy and I was able to turn the E and W into a wide loopy W and add a bit of extra loops and flourish to other letters so that it looked totally fine in the end albeit a bit stylized. She was happy in the end and still comes to get work from me.

Ten years of tattooing and that one still haunts me. There have been other mistakes but they’re mostly the clients fault... things like dads getting their children’s birthdays wrong (happens a lot actually. Dude, I don’t know what month your kid was born... call your wife!).

Also, bonus story: the guy who spells his kids name wrong! I had him write their name down. Literally HE wrote it down. “Bently” I drew up a fun custom script, he loved it. Put the stencil on him and had him check it out (I even told him to make sure everything was right), all good. Did the lining and had him check it out while we took a break, loved it. Finished the shading and drop-shadow etc, all finished. He’s checking it out in the mirror, loves it, until I hear, “uhhh, what about the e?”

“What E?” I reply in dismay!

“The E! Bently has an E!”

So I show him what he had written down, and he groans, “oh man, I always fu** that up... my wife is going to kill me!”

So I sit down with the original drawing and manage to turn part of the L and the Y into an E, add another couple lines to re-form the L and Y, and boom: Bentley. It worked out in the end and I felt like and absolute wizard, but fu**, DUDE, it’s your kid’s name and you didn’t notice the spelling was wrong the 10 times you checked it out during the process?!?

What a job.

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Id row
Id row
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There should be a form that they have to sign stating that they've read the final spelling and approved it before it got put on permanently.

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#9

A few years ago I was tattooing a client who had apparently lost a bet, his buddies were allowed to tattoo something behind his shoulder as long as it wasn’t racist or offensive.

Turns out the guy drew up a design of “A Leprechaun throwing up on a book”... Sure, why not, everyone was sober and they were paying pounds upfront.

Easy work- the drawing was really simple and the shading was easier than I thought it’d be.

Turns out everyone liked it... Except the guy with the tattoo of a Leprechaun throwing up on a book. He picked at the scab, trying to get rid of it, completely took it from bad to worse.

Comes in about ten days later, demanding a refund of money HE didn’t pay or the studio, not me, cover it up. Nope, management said you signed for it in your right mind and than damaged it yourself, personally I was yelled at and told NEVER tattoo anyone like that, it only works in television series or film.

Did I make a mistake? Yes and no.

The lesson here is don’t get involved in others drama when permanent body marking are involved.

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Owen Little
Owen Little
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

no mistake just a dumb custemer

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Dynein
Dynein
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Well, OP made a mistake in accepting this order in the first place. These customers were the kind of people who decide to make embarrassment permanent, which is an indicator of pretty bad judgement. People regularly overestimate their tolerance for that stuff, and if you can't undo it or wipe it out of your memory... I wouldn't have touched that situation with a 10 foot pole. Looks like OP learned their lesson, though.

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Kennedy Johnson
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yuck. I just imagined him picking at the scab. That’s his fault.

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Honu
Honu
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There was a reality show here in the US with people doing revenge tattoos, where the two people at odds chose a tattoo for each other. If I were a tattoo artist, I don't think I'd want to be anywhere near that.

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Artime Silk
Artime Silk
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We gotta get rid of the 'customer is always right' motto because this person was really dumb

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Oskar vanZandt
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Maybe it would've helped if this guy had looked into what a tattoo actually is? A friend of mine got a skin irritation from the ink of her tattoo and what was meant to be a sold black design became gray and mottled... I think the tattoo artist (one who was well known/respected and had tattooed celebrities was coked-up on this occasion and made a mistake in mixing/preparing the ink).

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Brandi VanSteenwyk
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Do you think the "victim" was equally angry with the pals that started the whole debacle?

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JessG
JessG
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wait, he came in TEN years later?!?! The audacity of that guy! Why wait so damn long? What if the tattoo artist wasn't there? Ten years, sheesh, smh

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Vasana Phong
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Like that episode of impractical jokers 😂, but maybe also a warning or reminder at the door about losing a bet then getting tatted etc. ect...

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QueenMiri
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Bets are for idiots who have nothing better to do with their time. Stupid.

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Sam Cook
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

A golden mistake. It would have been better if he was on pot.

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3 years ago

This comment has been deleted.

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Samantha PandaNotBored
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3 years ago

This comment is hidden. Click here to view.

That was a boring story. Being Irish myself, I thought the tattoo meant something.

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JessG
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It obviously meant something between the two friends in the shop.

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#10

This will be buried but it's worth a shot. I work at a tattoo shop with a few artists. One of our artists fu**ed up tremendously on a face tattoo. She did the stencil before hand and showed him, after his approval she started above his brow. He wanted "cursed" but he left the shop with "CUSRED" tattooed on his forehead. He was pissed of course, never saw him again.

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#11

My wife and I got matching tattoos with our children’s bday and our wedding day. Pretty generic. We had to watch the kids so we took turns. She went first, I showed up after her appt and she was beaming with excitement at how nice the numbers were. She showed me. The wedding day was wrong. She had the 15th and ours is the 14th. The tattoo artist felt terrible. My wife had looked at it atleast twice before she it was put on. Entirely her fault.

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Persp Gold
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

hopefully they have a sense of humor "my wife doesn't know our wedding day" can just be a funny story for the right couple

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#12

Tattooing a kanji backwards. Client brought in the reversed image, I made a stencil and applied it and the client checked it in the mirror and gave the OK. Came back the next day claiming I did it wrong. I pulled the original out of my box and held it up next to the tattoo and said “nope, that’s what you brought in.” Felt bad, but still laughed when she left. long story short: YOU AS A CLIENT ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR SPELLING. Tattoo artists are not cultural experts or professional grammar nazis. You pick it, we just stick it.

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#13

Dang, I’m late to the party. This didn’t happen to me, but to an artist that used to work in the booth next to me.

Some lady comes in and wants a pocket watch with roses in her arm, so my coworker agrees to do it. The client specifically wanted the pocket watch to be stopped at “4:20”

He draws it up for her right arm and she’s soooo excited, but for some reason she decides to change it to the left arm last minute. No problem, he runs in the back to the printer to mirror the image. She loves it, and they slap the stencil on and start tattooing. When they’re almost done, he realizes when they mirrored the image, the clock doesn’t say “4:20” anymore, it says “7:40”.

He doesn’t know what to do besides finish the tattoo. When the client checks it out in the mirror, she doesn’t notice and fu**ing loves it. The lady ended up coming back a few weeks later to say once again how much she loved it! I always wonder if she ever found out...

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Stephanie Did It
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

So when she sees it in the mirror it says exactly what she wants it to!

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#14

When I first opened my shop I was SUPER nervous about making mistakes and those first few clients were a roller coaster of anxiety

Well ofcourse one of my first clients comes in and asked for a tattoo to be covered because another artist screwed it up. The tattoo was meant to be a peanut riding a motorcycle however the tattoo artist screwed up and it looked like a penis riding a malformed motorcycle from hell.

So I get to work covering it up with a new design, she asked for a raven to cover it up since I could colour the raven in black and cover up the other artists mistake. No problem all good right?

No.....the tattoo was in a SUPER awkward position and the client wouldn't stop squirming. Eventually I finished and to my dismay I noticed my fu** up....

I didnt cover the peanut part of the original tattoo properly and the raven looked like it had a little penis coming out of it....

When she realized she was angry and demanded it be fixed, the only solution I saw was to attach another smaller raven to the original one as a sort of chain link.

The client now tells people that the tattoo is two chained ravens because "our inner darkness must be chained"....but we both know why she REALLY got it...ha little penis man

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Sam Cook
Sam Cook
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3 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

So, they were…raven mad, eh? …God help me.

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#15

My ONLY spelling mistake ever was in Italian. Girl wants a phrase in Italian. She writes it down no less than 5x on a paper. I tell her to make sure it is correct, I don’t speak Italian. She insists it is correct. I draw up some nice script, tattoo it with no issues, bandage, pay and she leaves. She comes back in hysterical and tells me I spelled it wrong. I hadn’t thrown out the paper. I spelled it exactly how she spelled it. I asked what she wanted to do, and she decided “eh no one I know speaks Italian”. That was about 15 years ago, I often wonder if she ended up getting it covered up.

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John C
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Note to self: if I ever become a tattoo artist, SAVE ALL THE PAPERS.

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#16

I’ve never really made any big mistakes that garnered a reaction, but one of my clients has a tattoo from another artist in a local studio that says “Gradad” instead of Grandad.

The studio fired the artist and wouldn’t take any responsibility for what had happened

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#17

Apprentice here. Nothing major but bad karma on one tattoo from the get go that absolutely floored my confidence for a bit. Only recently did my first ever small tattoo on a client. Had to do a small range of flash ideas that I felt comfortable with. Had my mentor (who,judging by some other stories, I'm very lucky to have. Hes a sound dude) discuss with me beforehand my needle choices, placement technique, usual bits and was ready to go. Every felt ready. Midway through, my machine goes. Its brand new. My only one. Managed to sort it without much fuss. In doing so, in my panic put the wrong needle size in the machine when it came to replacing it with a fresh one. Botched a line when I realise almost immediately the size difference. Change again, nerves are shot, back at it. Brand new footpedal breaks. Replace it with an old one from my mentor. It breaks too. Power pack dies. That was brand new too. Panic. Spill my ink. Practically had a meltdown in my brain about what has happened. Carried on with another artists equipment. Apologising as calmly as I can to my client. Mentor calmed my nerves and I ended up pulling it out the bag and doing a job I was happy with somehow but most importantly, the client loved it. Anyway, not a crazy bad story but as an apprentice who's also a fairly confident dude, I have never felt so absolutely floored in my life. Tattooing someone is monumentally stressful when all doesnt go to plan. I cant wait to do more and progress, but fu** me what a time for sh** to happen. My mentor helped me sort all my gear afterward and was super cool. Sat with me and said something like "Well. Of all the times and all the things that could've gone wrong. That was the absolutely perfect one for them" Nerve wracking stuff.

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Id row
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Do you have to tell the client that they're your very first one and have never done it before? I can't imagine too many people would be ok with that.

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#18

I tattooed Philippines 4:13 instead of Philippians 4:13 on a girl one time. Fortunately I was able fix it though

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#19

When I started tattooing I was working at an awful studio that would often give me works that didn't fit my style in any way (very fine line works which I wasn't very good at)

The mistakes I made were usually crooked tattoos or going too deep and instead of actual helping me the owners either would yell at me later, forced me to tell clients I was more experienced than I actually am and got upset that I "ask too many questions".

Eventually they just stopped giving me work all together. Sadly every once in a while they give my number to unhappy clients that I tattooed at that time and I still get calls asking me for compensation. I know it's also my fault for those things but they really took of any responsibility.

These days I have my own small one person studio, I have nothing but sweet and satisfied clients and ironically I do a lot of fine line tattoos which I used to hate at that studio.

But if you want something specific- while I was in the studio some girl wanted a cursive tattoo that was extremely tiny. It was extremely small and thin and when I finished it looked good but when it healed a lot of the letters spread and mashed up together and because she barely had any tattoos it was VERY noticable. I gave her money back even though she demanded me to pay for tattoo removal. (And yes she signed a contract beforehand but the studio told me it protected only them and not me)

I read thoroughly and fortunately realized she had no case against me so she couldn't sue. In general today I recommend people to steer clear of that place, disgusting money grabber assholes.

They do treat other tattoo artists who work for them like sh**.

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Persp Gold
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3 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I have a few friends who tattoo in a very distinct style. Unlike TV, being a master at all art is not necessary to be a good tattoo artist. Thats why artists have portfolios, and why you should look at portfolios to get a feel for style and content. (edit: actual friends, not my artists because i do not like the style.)

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#20

Oh semi recently I did an arm band of sheet music on this walk in and I put one of the segments on upside down because I don’t read music and it looked right. Client noticed when I was about halfway done with that segment; luckily she was cool and just said she should have checked her stencil harder and shrugged it off.

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#21

Back when I first started tattooing, I think I’d only been doing it for about 3 months at this point, one of my pals asked if he could come to me for finger tattoos. I asked my mentor, and he said it was too early for me to move onto hands just yet.

One of the other guys in the studio overheard and said he’d actually been wanting to get his fingers tattooed for a while, if my mentor was happy with it he’d let me practice on him. My mentor okayed it, so he got to work on the stencil. The tattooist I was practicing on is ambidextrous, and had an exact font in mind for his finger tattoos, so he said if I got everything set up, he’d freehand the script (no stencil) on his hands and then we could just get started.

I finished the first hand, everything was fine, until I went on to start his second hand, at which point he was checking out the tattoo I’d just finished. And realised he’d written the script out left to right facing him. Meaning to everyone else the finger tattoos were backwards (just the phrase - not the whole letters). Cue much panic, me convinced he’s going to go mental at me for not noticing, him convinced he’s landed me in it with my mentor, before we both calmed down and started spitballing on how to fix the tattoo on the fly. The phrase he’d gone for (“riff raff”) was thankfully similar enough on each hand that all we had to do was block out the vowels a bit more and make them slightly larger than the other letters in order to hide the original vowel underneath. In the end we fixed it, he got the tattoo the right way around, and you can’t even tell there was once a mistake under it.

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#22

My ex did a large scarification on the client's abdomen. The client had brought in a piece of paper with the stylized word " preserverence".

I was invited in mid-way to see the progress and had to tap my ex on the shoulder for a spelling lesson.

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Vasana Phong
Vasana Phong
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I almost think it happens more often when there’s a lot of vowels involved, hec I do it a lot just writing

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#23

I was working at a place when a guy came in for a full back piece of 3 different cars. It took like 4 visits to finish and each visit he'd look at it and say it looks awesome and then he would take off. On the last visit, they call me in to look at it to show me how awesome it turned out. Well, all the steering wheels were on the wrong side and the reason no one caught it was because the dude was looking in a mirror to check his progress so they looked correct. I'm pretty sure the guy was super chill about it when they offered a bunch of free work and they fixed it in another session.

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#24

I was working at a shop in NYC, this very heavy set gentlemen came in and wanted a full back piece. No other tattoos. The design was very elaborate and quite good. Once it was all approved the tattoo stencil was applied, and again approved by the client. I wasn’t doing the tattoo, but I was occasionally checking in on the process. Once the line work was done as shading had begun... I noticed something horrible... the stencil was applied over his rolls of skin on his lower back. I made a comment to the artist privately. He went back to tattooing, moved the skin apart at one point... and with out a doubt several inches of untattooed skin.

The client never noticed. I stopped working there not too long after that, not for this reason.

I’ve always felt so bad for that guy.

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#25

Worst was when I just started out tattooing.. a few months in I’m tattooing a old coworkers wife and she’s getting some Roman numerals and before starting I ask her to triple check the numbers and she’s like yup all good let’s do it.

Que 1 hour after being done I receive a text from my old coworker that the one of the letters are wrong...

That was a great week to be alive dealing with that anxiety.

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#26

As other artists have said, none besides some blowouts and wonky lines that were fixable when i was a new artist. But ive fixed some really fu**ed up ones. Mostly spelling mistakes. Some terrible ones. But i had to do a cover up of one of a guys son. The portrait was wonky and obviously done by a kitchen wizard. The worst part was that all the "designs" the scratcher did around it were for a girl. They werent approved by the client. The scratcher that did it thought it was a little girl and did all kinds of pinks and hearts and bows in the hair and around it...the worst part, he wrote, "Daddies girl". The lettering basically butted right up against the portrait on top and bottom so just covering up the designs wasnt possible. It needed a full on cover up, which i wouldve recommended regardless because of the sh** portrait by itself. So we covered it up with an approved design and he came back to my shop for my version of the hyperrealistic portrait of his SON that he wanted.

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Dynein
Dynein
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Even if it HAD been a daughter, the bows and hearts and writing shouldn't have been added without the client's explicit approval! Not all girls are girly, not all girly girls are _that_ girly, and even if that was the case, this design choice is just so awfully generic and over the top that it turns the tattoo from "my daughter with her unique personality" to "cliche cutesy girl". Quite apart from the fact that the father might want the design to fit with his own preferences as well.

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#27

I was doing a big ol' tattoo of Cringer (aka Battlecat) on a really cool client's leg. I got so into doing this big, awesome tiger head that I forgot that it WASN'T a goddamn tiger and colored the stripes black. I realized about a third of the way through filling them in and let the guy know. He was disappointed, but mostly okay with it; I felt like I was going to puke. I finished the thing feeling so fu**ing sick and then refused payment. Man, going from that feeling of elation to IMMEDIATE crushing disappointment was hard to shake, and kind of dazed me. It was extra crushing because it was a fun tattoo during a time when I wasn't that busy and was doing mostly absolute dreck. The payment was just the icing on the top, so letting that go was hard too. Ugh, just thinking about it now is making me feel sick.

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#28

Got a small tattoo on my foot. As he was making a line I heard him say "Whoops..." I now have a stray line that's jutting off away from the rest of the tat. Fortunately over time it has faded, but it's such a crappy tattoo. The whole thing is just the worst. It was only $60 so I didn't say anything, and just told myself one day I'd get it covered up by something better.

Edit to add: the main reason I didn't complain is because the tattoo artist was (and still is) my best friend’s neighbor.

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Id row
Id row
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Never use friends, family or acquaintances unless they already have a stellar reputation.

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#29

I've been fairly lucky and able to fix or cover everything I've done.

It's all little stuff like "always" only has 1 L, getting a date mixed up on translation while going through various fonts, or the dreaded starting coloring the wrong side of a nautical star. Sh** still gives me chills and I've developed a bit of OCD asking and double checking all the things. I've got 16 years in this game, and I am only human.

The absolute worst I've witnessed, a guy did a huge flowy script on a girl's thigh. Supposed to be "Born 2 Lose", actually said "Born 2 Loose". The only thing I could do was a massive coverup.

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#30

Did my first one on an old schoolmate who was aware of my artistic abilities, despite having never applied ink before, and he offered me his back. I had 3 pros watching as I drew a geisha freehanded on his back while he was hunched over. When the design was laid out, he checked it in the mirror and was good with it so I began lining it. The thing is, the other artists said it looked great but unfortunately I was doing something else when he checked it so I didn't notice just how screwed up it really was.Any way, I lined it and we took a break. As he stood up while I was watching, my heart dropped as I witnessed the geisha's face droop into a palsied state on one side. He was sitting leaned forward with his elbows on his knees while drawing it and so distorted the canvas.

Now, this sounds crappy, but I never really liked this guy too much (he originally wanted a back full of strippers) so I didn't feel bad that when he went to look in the mirror, he lifted his shoulder to look at the tattoo, which normalized the proportions and he said it looked awesome. Well, good then. Big lesson learned though. I still have the occasional nightmare over it.

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John C
John C
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Appreciate your honesty here, but your lack of honesty with the client kinda sucks. This kind of story reinforces my fears of what the artist is secretly judging me for, and what they're not telling me because of that.

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#31

Tattoo artist here. Best case I ever saw, a guy came into our shop asking about a cover up. The tattoo wasn’t done at our place. He had what we call a “belly rocker”. One of those lettering tattoos that arcs over the belly. Think Tommy Lee’s “mayhem” tattoo. Usually gothic font, gangsta type piece.

He had beautifully executed, bold, black, old English letters across his belly that were supposed to read, “scarred for life”. Whoever did the tattoo (as well as the tattooed guy) had forgotten one of the letters. An “r”.

This guy came in with “scared for life” on his belly.

We showed him some cover up options, including full torso, Japanese style bodysuit stuff. Someone may have joked about doing the old proofreading trick of just putting a little red arrow and adding the missing letter.

I don’t know who did the thing but never saw him again after giving cost estimates for the giant cover up.

15 or so years ago, we still joke about this one.

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#32

I had a client who decided he wanted lettering on his forearms, sayings in Greek and Hebrew. He doesn’t speak either language, but he had one of his friends double check the spelling before he sent the references to me. Came in, we did the tattoos, pretty simple appointment.

Fast forward to a couple weeks later. I get a message from my client about the tattoo that was done in Hebrew. He owns a small construction/restoration company, and has a few Israeli guys who work for him. Apparently, they were giving him A LOT of crap for his Hebrew tattoo (he originally thought they were just messing with him), because it was spelled wrong. The font he had chosen off a quick google search essentially changed a couple of the letters (kinda like the difference between an “f” and a “t”), making it a completely different word. We ended up being able to fix it pretty easily and had a good laugh about it, but definitely beware when you’re getting tattoos in a language you and your artist don’t speak!

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King Joffrey
King Joffrey
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

In all honesty, don't get a tattoo in a language YOU don't speak.

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#33

This happened back in 2012 when I was really new at this. I was tattooing a good friend of mine. He wanted a clock tattoo (my first one ever with Roman numerals) with a mask next to it. Once the drawing was done, we realized that the mask was not fitting properly on the leg (due to other tattoos he had). So I went to the printer and flipped the design (mirrored). Put it on the leg and it was more than perfect. I start the tattoo, we chat and then I’m done. He gets up and checks in the mirror to see the final result and he realized that the clock had the roman numerals flipped (3 was at 9). We both froze, laughed it up and went back on the table to fix it. At the end, it turned out to be not as bad as I thought it would be.

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#34

I went to college with a veteran tattoo artist and she told me that she's made a few mistakes, but nothing too crazy, she told me the worst freakout a customer had was when she was making a celtic knot to his own specifications, despite her telling him that "That isn't how they're supposed to look" He payed for it anyways, she made the tattoo, and the idiot didn't like the results and pushed over a couple shelves and broke the window with a chair in frustration, all while cussing her out.

When he was arrested for his blunder, the police uncovered a lot more about him than his terrible tattoo idea. It. Ame to light that not only was he addicted to heroine and evaded taxes, but he also abused his wife and son.

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#35

I’m late to the party! But... my grandma passed away and I got her date of birth, date of death, with a hummingbird and the phrase “your wings were ready but my heart was not.” So artist had it all drawn up, I approved it, she finished, I paid, and left. Got to my moms, showed her, she loved it! Posted a picture on Facebook, and five minutes later my cousin texts my mom about my grandmas date of birth, at that very moment I realized with horror that I had the wrong month in her date of birth... apparently November is the 11th month, not the 10th, who knew. Edit to add: I laughed as soon as I realized what had happened. My grandma would not have been pleased with me getting a tattoo in the first place, even though I have others, so I take the mistake as her last, fu** you. Also, missed a comma.

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Persp Gold
Persp Gold
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

😄"her last fu** you" 😄both my grandmas were this type. that generation that survived the great depression had teeth

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#36

Misspelled the name Jamie, Jaime.

I asked the client for the spelling and showed the client the laid out script before it was applied. So not my fault.

The client was very disgusted with himself for not knowing how to spell the name of the woman he loved enough to show it on his skin for life. I felt sorry for the guy so I offered him a cover-up at an incredible discount as well as the name re-applied spelled correctly, Unfortunately he never took me up on that offer

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#37

I've been tattooing people for awhile now. This guy wanted to to tattoo his dad on his upper arm. After a couple hours I was on the moustache, it was a goatee. I started around 3 or 4'o clock, and when I was done I couldn't help but see this horrible mistake... I made a Hitler stache and a goatee. As I now call a hitee. I gave him $75 off and never saw him again.

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