Ink Tales: Number Two (and Three-ish)

My second tattoo happened a year and a half after my first one. I was home on summer vacation between my freshman and sophomore years at Ohio University. I had two awesome best friends and had really come out of my shy, high school shell. I had discovered alcohol too, so that helped the shell disintegrate pretty fast.... I was thinking about possibly changing my major from Retail Merchandising to English (although I hadn't vocalized this yet) and I was truly happy. I have always loved butterflies, I even caught a caterpillar once and raised it until he hatched into a butterfly. I loved how they started out as such an ugly, insignificant thing, and then became something majestic and beautiful. I felt like that was what was happening to me...finally, and I wanted to represent that. So I drew a butterfly and took it to the tattoo parlor to have them perfect it (since I'm a horrendous artist). I wanted a sunrise in the wings, to represent new life. The tattoo turned out fine, the colors weren't really what I wanted and after a few months I felt like it was lacking something, but I liked it nevertheless.

That Spring, I had a new boyfriend and I'd been talking about getting another tattoo. I wanted lilacs really bad and was going to get them done when I went home. He asked why not get them done in Athens, as there were several tattoo parlors there. I decided sure, since I didn't really like the one at home anyway. We went into one (the other one had been unrecommended by his sister). I talked to Jimmy at Decorative Injections about getting lilacs on my hip. He warned me that as high as I wanted it, there was a good chance it would stretch when/if I was to get pregnant and could come back together really weird since it would be so small. I was a little disappointed, but glad he had saved me from a potentially bad tattoo since I do want kids. My boyfriend, Toby, suggested I get it added to my butterfly since I was sort of unsatisfied with it. Jimmy said that would be awesome and he could definitely add around it. When I went back to get it done, I explained the color scheme I had originally wanted. He just drew the lilacs on my foot (no stencil) and fixed the butterfly coloring. I almost passed out from the pain...why the foot twice?! However, I was so happy with the outcome and still love it today. It represents the college-Jenna quite well :) It's not as easy to see when I'm super tan...and I just returned from the beach.