Tattoos for Teens

When I proposed programs for spring 2014 I decided to push the envelope a little. I thought it would be interesting to have a tattoo program where the teens could design and make their own temporary tattoos. My hope was that we could get a positive conversation going with the teens about tattoos: pros, cons, history, the current and historical connotations, trends, etc. Anything they wanted to talk about, this would be the place! I was more than a little surprised when the proposal was approved, and Tattoo Art was born!

It was also around this time that I realized something. When we hold programs we often close the doors to the room so we're not disruptive or so little ones don't escape, etc. (it depends on the program). So we lose a lot of potential attendance from walk-ins that have no idea there's a program going on (or what all the noise behind the door is). So I decided to make this:

I set this outside the doors so that passers by would see what was happening and (hopefully) stop in. It's much more eye-catching than taping the tiny flier to the doors (which I still do too) and it feeds on the current chalkboard art trend. On the other hand, it's extremely time consuming. I'm getting better, but they don't exactly put themselves together!

A lot of this program wound up being a giant experiment. Some of it worked and some of it didn't. So let's talk.

What worked:

• The first thing we did was find our tattoos. I made a secure Pinterest board of black ink tattoo ideas and opened it up on a couple of our iPad minis. The teens really enjoyed that an even ventured (with caution and supervision) out into the internet to find their own designs.
• To transfer an outline onto the skin we traced our chosen design on tracing paper, then filled in the lines SUPER thick (remember that words or designs that must be applied a particular direction will need to be double traced so they go in correctly). Then dampen the area you want to apply the design, put the tracing paper on pencil-side-down, and wet the back of the paper for several seconds. Basically like applying a real temporary tattoo. Really, this just gives you a vestige of what to trace/fill-in when we go in for the next step.
• We used black liquid eyeliner to trace the penciled image. I tested it at home with pencil eyeliner, and it works well, but it's hard to use  fine tip and it isn't as bold as the liquid. so it all depends on the look you're going for.
• Once it's finished, cover the design with baby powder and gently brush off the excess. This helps to dry and "set" the design. It also makes it look a little faded and more realistic.

What didn't work:

• A lot of the sites I looked into when researching the temporary tattoo process said that sealing the design would keep it permanent for several days. This begs more investigation, but from what I saw... it's a bald-faced lie.
• Options included spraying the design with hairspray or liquid bandage. Since the latter is designed to seal wounds and use on large areas of skin, I went with that. Yeah. Bad idea. As it turns out, this makes the tattoo shrink on the skin and start flaking off after only a few hours. True, the entire design wouldn't come off (without serious scrubbing) for a full day... but it's nowhere near what I was promised.

So that was something of a disappointment. But the teens had a blast! Check out some of their amazing designs:

Also, my colleges who allowed me to use them as practice canvases:

(Probably should have tested it more than five hours before the program, but I didn't. Learn from my mistakes.)

And me:

(The first Totoro was an experiment and I did some things seriously wrong, so it came off within an hour. The other ones are doodles I did during the program while chatting with the teens.)

I don't have any tattoos, mostly because I have no idea what I'd put on myself. But these would be contenders. Baby Totoro, an abstract stack of books, and the Dewey decimal number to the children's section.