It hurts to be beautiful

This Friday I went in to get a tattoo.  I wanted to get the same artist who did my shoulder tattoos to do this new one, but I made the decision in June last year and she was booked up for seven months.  Seven months is a long time to wait, but I was sure I wanted the same artist so waiting was the thing to do.

For no good reason I wanted a flaming tree on my chest.  People have asked if it is some kind of biblical burning bush reference (HELL NO) and also if it has some kind of significance for me (regular no).  The only kind of memory I have that relates to a burning tree is one time when my dad was burning a brush pile in our field and the fire got away from him and ended up burning down a stand of huge old pine trees.  Thankfully the stand of trees was in the middle of a field so there wasn't anything to spread the fire to.  I recall me and my brother running around with pails once the fire was mostly burned out, putting water on the smouldering bits.  I had to put him on my shoulders so we could get water onto a smoking branch that was out of my reach.

But none of that has anything to do with my tattoo, it is just a funny memory.  I don't know why I wanted a burning tree on my chest.  It just stuck in my mind once the possibility was there and made me want it desperately.

Here is the picture the artist made of what she was trying to do:

I didn't like the background stuff or the drippy effect, so it got updated to this:

And then when I decided I loved it she went to work on me.  Keep in mind that this is halfway done - the line work is complete and some filling in is done but I have another whole day in the chair filling in the rest to go:

It looks fantastic.  I gotta say, shaving my chest in preparation for the procedure was really weird though.  I have never done that before and it highlighted how my chest hair grows in all kinds of unexpected directions.  I also immediately felt like I looked wider somehow, like normal Sky pattern chest hair is slimming.

Just 9-10 hours of constant pain and way too much money, that is all it takes to make me pretty.  SO worth it.