Archive for tattoo designs
Holy See in Vatican Hosts Tattoo Conference
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This December saw one of the more unusual places to host a tattoo conference: at the seat of the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican. What was even more unusual was that it was organized by Israel’s Ambassador to the Holy See along with a Christian arts association. The conference was called “Into the Skin: Identity, Symbols and History of Permanent Body Marks” and was actually conceived by Ambassador Mordechay Lewy despite the prohibition of tattooing in Judaism. In addition, the concept of a tattoo has a particularly painful association for most Jews because of the use of “death stamps” or the tattooed numbers for tracking Jews at Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
This conference looked at centuries of tattooing and how tattooing has become a part of the development in cultural groups to identify themselves. They traced this development from the tattooed brides of ancient Egypt to the First Crusaders who had cross tattoos branded to show their divine support all the way to today’s New Zealand All Black’s rugby team players who have Maori tattoos as part of their identity.
The conference is the first of its kind and was just a stone’s throw away, if you are a really good stone thrower, from St. Peter’s Cathedral at the Vatican’s Pontifical Urbaniana University. A scholarly study of the history of tattoo, it drew participants from such lofty places as Oxford University, University of Poitiers in France and the curator of the Pacific Culture Museum of New Zealand. The two day conference discussed historical tattoos, and even the current role of the commercialization of tattoos in present day pop culture.
Holiday Tattoo Designs: Christmas Tattoos
Posted by: | CommentsI first heard of this a few years back and thought at first they were just talking about the temporary kind that you used to get in CrackerJack. You remember those? But then I noticed on oddee.com (a cool site for off the wall stuff on the web) that they had recently done a list of some pretty outrageous Christmas styled tattoos. So that one got me thinking of holiday tattoos in general, and Christmas ones in specific. Here are three from the ooddee site that I thought were particularly nice:
Christmas holiday tattoos
Personally I would have to really like the holiday to have something that iconic on my body, but there are some folks who really go big time for Christmas and so for them it probably makes sense to have a tattoo about Christmas. So just for fun I decided to check it out and see what I could find in case some of you are thinking of something like this to super-celebrate the Christmas Holiday Season. What I found was that most of them are from one of several animated Christmas shows. So I guess for most of us Christmas is all about watching TV after all:
Cartoon Christmas Tattoos!
Merry Christmas Everyone! Share your holiday tattoos with us here!
UglyTattoo Designs: ProWrestlers
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Okay I know some gals and quite a few guys that really love wrestling. Personally I have some great memories of watching it with my Dad when I was a kid; it is kind of like watching really bad theatre. Or really good theatre, if you really think about it. But when it comes to a tattoo design, I don’t think too many of the pro wrestlers that have come down over the ages make a great tattoo design.
Still, I know that there are quite a few of them out there so I thought I would cruise the web and see what I could find to share with all of you. Just a kind of food for thought, especially if you happen to be a big fan of Pro Wrestling and were considering a tattoo of your favorite. I mean, think about it. Who was your favorite wrestler 15 years ago? Would you still want that tattoo on your bode? Of course, if they are on a body like Tyler Reks, above, we wouldn’t care would we?
Celebrity Tattoos: Demi Lovato
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When it comes to celebrity tattoos, most of them love to share the story behind the celebrity tattoo with the rest of the world, and Demi Lovato is no different from the others in that respect.
The singer has had tattoos done before, but she says that this one is a bit different. In a recent Tweet, she sent out to her fans she said, “Sometimes you just to have a little bit of…” and below it was a picture of her new tattoo. She says that she had the word “faith” tattooed on her forearm to remind herself everyday how important that word is.
Like many of the celebrity tattoos we have shared with you here at FreeTattooPatternsOnline this one is a simple word tattoo that Demi had done to keep the faith with her fans. In this case, it was to remind her that her fans kept the faith with her during hard times.
She says that much like the heart she had tattooed on her wrist along with the words “stay strong” they were inspired by her fans who sent her pictures of their heart tattoos while she was in treatment.
She says her fans mean the world to her and she has the tattoos to prove it. “I will never forget the support you guys gave me” she says to her legion of fans across the world. And I guess that the new tattoo is just one more way that she gets to prove it.
Tattoo Questions: Tattoos Getting More Popular?
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There was a time when a tattoo was something a sailor or a criminal had, and that was about it. At least for most of us, as far as we knew back in the day, ordinary people just didn’t have a tattoo. But today it seems that everywhere you look are tattoo sites that talk about tattoos (like this one!) and there are books filled with all kinds of tattoo designs. You turn on the TV and someone is running around, with a tattoo showing quite clearly. But are we just more open about them or do more people actually have a tattoo design or multiple tattoo designs on their bodies?
Well, according to a site that claims to be the “world’s largest online tattoo museum”, we are not only more open about the tattoo designs we have, but more of us are getting a tattoo as well. The site, called The Vanishing Tattoo even has some information to back up that claim. They say that Harris Polls, which is a pretty reliable source, conducted a poll back in 2003 and estimated that around 16 percent of all Americans have at least one tattoo.
Now, when you compare that to a poll conducted by Life Magazine back in 1936 that is pretty hefty. Back then, only 6% of the population had a tattoo. Of course, it may be that it was just 6% were willing to admit they had a tattoo. In 1936 you pretty much were a low-life if you had a tattoo, or at least that was the assumption being made at the time.
Still, if you fast forward to 2006, seventy years later, a Pew Research poll shows us that between the ages of 18 and 25 36% of the US population has at least one tattoo. But what is much more surprising is that when you look at people between 26 and 40, the number goes up to 40%. So this looks like around the 60s through to the 80s a whole lot of us went out and got a tattoo. The flower children were doing much more than just going to Woodstock and making babies, apparently.
But I still think it feels like everyone around us has a tattoo, and that they are not only more common, they are more acceptable as a whole. True, some folks are getting theirs removed, but that is mostly just getting ones done in the heat of the moment or truly ugly tattoos. But for tattoo designs we have come to love, I think the tattoo question of the hour is: are tattoos now part of the culture? I think they may well be. There are hundreds of tattoo sites to pick out a tattoo design and no one thinks it is shocking anymore. In fact, except for those ugly tattoos like the ones that spell out HATE on knuckles and such, most tattoos are real works of art.
So what is your vote on this one? Am I being too much of a dreamer to think that tattoos are here to stay and just part of who we are now or are they simply a very visible sub-culture and will never be mainstream. Do we even want them to be mainstream?
Tattoo Celebrities: Travis says Yes to Kids Tattoos
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If you live in the state of California your kids cannot get a tattoo before they are 18, even if the parent gives his or her approval. But for Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker that doesn’t really matter. That is because the musician, known for having a few tattoos of his own, says that if his kids want a tattoo and they are at least 16, he would let them. Of course, he would let them with a few rules attached to that statement.
One of the main things he says he would require is that they must clear the tattoo design with him first. He may seem to have a laid-back attitude about his kids, which include his stepdaughter Atiana Cecilia who is 12 and his two kids of his own Landon Asher who is 8 and the youngest (for now) child Alabama Luelle who at 5 is probably not getting a tattoo any time soon. But he says he is pretty clear about the rules and the kids know they would have to clear any tattoo designs they wanted with him first.
“It can’t be a tramp stamp” says the Dad when talking about his kids and the tattoos they might be getting, “It can’t be something in bad taste.” I guess that would have to be clarified when the time comes, but he says that if the tattoo design is done in good taste and by one of the better tattoo artists he would be good with it once they are sixteen.
So what about your kids? Do you have rules with your kids about what age they can have a tattoo design done? How about the decision to choose which tattoo artists they want to have design it? How much control can a parent have about something as personal as a tattoo design on their kids?