August 30, 2013

HelllllOOOoOooOo! It’s Martina! So I had quite a loooong adventure yesterday. So those of you that follow us on our live chats would not be surprised to know that I was getting my half sleeve done, but for the rest of you (including my mom and dad…) SURPRISE! So whenever I get a tattoo I think very long and hard about it. This tattoo has been in the works for the past 5-6 years. It was always missing something so I just couldn’t start it but with the addition of Spudgy and Meemers in my life I was able to happily complete my half sleeve!

If you’re wondering where I went, I did a lot of research before I decided on Tattoo People in Hongdae. Their original branch is located in Busan, so all you Busan..anites…Busantlers? Busantaclauses? You can check them out!

My tattoo artist is CIAO and he is awesome. It was a really different experience than what I’m used to back home. We met up once or twice to get an idea of what I want and then we used KAKAO chat to send pictures back and forth to each other. It was awesome to get a message at midnight from CIAO being like, “Martina, check out Meemers! What do you think?” It was constant feedback and I was able to sketch out the changes I wanted, snap a picture, and send it back right away. Nifty!

And for those of you that will inevitably ask me about the price, I can’t really answer you because it honestly changes simply depending on the design. The amount of colour, size, complication, the artist’s experience are all factors. If you want to get a tattoo done in Korea, I’ve had an awesome experience thus far! The studio is clean, all the artists were friendly, CIAO speaks a bit of English, I speak a bit of Korean, so together it forms communication! You can check out their Facebook page here to see some of their work or to drop them a message.

We also did a TL;DR about tattoos in Korea a while ago, which you can check out here for more info:

So this video only documents my first session which involves the most painful part, the line work, which is just a fancy way of saying the outlining. Yes it hurt, but it didn’t hurt as badly as my feet tattoos which were just searing horrid pain for the entire experience. This time I came prepared for a long session, and as per Martina tradition, I always research as much as I can before I do anything. So, here are some of the tips I gathered for dealing with a tattoo session:

1. Eat a BIG MEAL before you start. Even the toughest person can pass out from shock if they have an empty stomach, even from a small tattoo! Your mind might be able to take it but your body is going to panic. I carb loaded with a big cream pasta for lunch and a beef curry with white rice for dinner.

2. Pack some sugary snacks to keep your blood sugar up because you’ll start to feel weird. I packed a chocolate bar and a can of pop even though I don’t normally eat those kind of things but by the second hour I was happy to nom a chocolate bar.

3. Zone out with music and prepare a playlist in advance. You might be in a weird position that doesn’t allow you to fiddle with your music, so prep it in advance. When in pain, I enjoyed zoning out to aggressive rock and heavy metal, so my playlist included: Deftones, Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein, Death From Above 1979, Muse, and Gogo Star. Such a funny playlist for such an adorable tattoo!

4. Have an iPad? Prepare a TV series or a movie to watch. Time will FLY by when you’re wrapped up in a good TV show. I refuse to tell you which TV show I was watching but if you look carefully in the time lapse, you just might catch a glimpse of it. High five + explosion to the first person to name that show!

5. Wear loose comfy clothing AND pack socks and a zipper hoodie even if it isn’t cold. Your body gets cold and hot and does all types of weird things when trying to deal with the pain, plus sometimes you’re just underdressed for your tattoo. The zipper hoodie because it’s easy to use as a blanket as well.

6. Pack a pillow or stuffed toy. Every tattoo parlour I have been to never has comfy pillows for you to lounge on, so I’ve learned my lesson and have always packed a plump stuffed toy. Yesterday’s toy was my Junsu Banana. He acted as a table for my ipad as well as a nifty back support and pillow. GO BANANA!

So that’s about it for now. I start my next session after Australia and I can’t wait to post the complete pictures of it! Are any of you Nasties thinking of getting tattoos? Or do you already have a tattoo? Or are you against tattoos? Spudgy was planning on getting a tattoo on his tummy that said “touch me over here, touch me, touch me over there” but I talked him out of it. Oh Spudgy.

Lastly, subscribe for more videos! The way tattoos make you a cooler person, so does subscribing. You’ll be so cool people will give you tattoos for free. Yeah. That cool: