April Challenge #7

What tattoos you have and their special meaning.

I only have one tattoo. My husband paid for it as a gift for my 45th birthday. I had always wanted one and at that age felt it was time to either just do it or give up on it. After sharing that thought with my husband over lunch one rainy Saturday, we went out to run some errands and he pulled up in front of a tattoo shop. When I asked what we were doing there, his response was "Go in and find one you want."

None of the already designed tattoos they had to choose from were quite what I was looking for so I worked with one of the artists to come up with a design. He was a graduate of the Pittsburgh Art Institute and really went to town on my little tat. It's faded some now, but when he first did it the colors were so bright that a lot of people thought it was fake! He used a lot of shading and stuff. When he was done, there were 17(!) ink colors in my tattoo.

Here it is when it was new:

As for a special meaning, it's simply a nod to my love of the beach and a way to always have a wee bit of the beach with me.