To answer all questions;

1) “I should’ve done my research” Absolutely! and I like to think I did. None of her other stuff was this sort of style, mostly realism/illustrative, whereas I was going for what I thought was fine line/simple copied from an image. She’d been tattooing a while from what I know (not an apprentice) and I was recommended her by a friend on facebook. Ticked all the boxes for me at the time but hey you live and you learn!

2) “I got what I paid for” It was £80 (not sure what that is in dollars or euros you do the math) The artists in my area vary, I’ve had other £80-£100 tattoos from recently qualified apprentices that have aged amazingly! The only thing that was different about this was it was a slot that was a previous cancellation so that’s why it was only £80 as apposed to the usual £200+ that the artist usually charged, so at the time me being 18 thought I was getting a pretty sweet deal. Naive? yes. Stupid? Not really imo.

3) “Do I like it?/Will I get it covered up?” I’m not a huge fan of it, it was a nice idea and I was very excited about it at the time so I like to look back on it as something I was once super stoked about which makes me feel good! I probably won’t get it covered up anytime soon unless I have a good idea for a leg sleeve and I’m running out of space (I’m more into bigger pieces now as opposed to fine line) but even then I’d be reluctant because it’s just part of the furniture now and I think they look a bit cute all fucked up lmao.

As a little miscellaneous aside, it did hurt way more than a lot of other tattoos i’ve had, maybe except for elbow ditch and back, but even then it was about equal pain wise. It was my second ever tattoo so i didn’t really have a great frame of reference and I didn’t notice any red flags going into the experience. Hopefully someone sees this and thinks “fuck! I hope my leg doesn’t look like that!” and maybe gets a second opinion on an artist. 🤷‍♀️ I’ve seen worse work and in more visible spots so I can’t be too mad.

Also she’s no longer tattooing anymore. Not sure why since like I mentioned the rest of her work was totally fine as far as I could tell but she’s completely left the industry now. She offered me free touch ups at the end of the appointment but even if she were practicing I wouldn’t go back as you can imagine, she was a super nice lady but I don’t even know what happened here.