Today's tattoo is from Ruth. She's actually an old friend who I never knew had a tattoo! :)
Her tattoo is a quote of scripture out of the Bible:
"We Walk By Faith, Not By Sight" 2 Corinthians 5:7
As most of you know, those of you from YT anyway, I'm a huge Jason Mraz fan. So much so that I even have the Mraz lyric/title "Only Human" on my left wrist:
So I was pretty psyched when I got this anonymous mobile email the other day with another Mraz tattoo :)
Thank you, whoever you are, for sharing your body art!!
This is Ashley’s best friend’s tattoo.
The Family Prayer:
"And Shepherds we shall be
For thee, my Lord, for thee.
Power hath descended forth from Thy hand
Our feet may swiftly carry out Thy commands.
So we shall flow a river forth to Thee
And teeming with souls shall it ever be.
In Nomeni Patri Et Fili Spiritus Sancti."
Today’s tattoo comes to us all the way from Italy…
I’m not sure if she even knows she’s going to be featured today (since this is a friend of a friend’s body art) but I’ll take the fact that she posed for the picture as permission enough:
Now I know the font is wonky, but it is supposed to say “tramps like us…”
The highways jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive
Everybodys out on the run tonight but there's no place left to hide
Together wendy well live with the sadness
Ill love you with all the madness in my soul
Someday girl I don't know when were gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go and well walk in the sun
But till then tramps like us baby we were born to run
Since tomorrow is going to be really busy for me (yay, garage sale!) I decided to go ahead and post…
Today is dedicated to tattoos that are not necessarily “literary”, but are textual instead.
First up is from Jenny:
Both are in russian in the Cyrillic alphabet.
However I am swedish and do not speak that language, but since everyone has a story that comes with their tattoo, so have I.
I was asking around in my family about my heritage and where my grandmother on my fathers side was born, and where she lived before she met my grandfather, and so on.
I found out that my grandmother (Sisko) was born in Russia, but moved to Finland during the world war two when she met my grandfather (Soini) who worked as a railway worker. So for my grandmothers memory and for how much I love her I did this two tattoos..:)
The first one says "Truth in Love" and sits on my left sleeve, and the second says "Jenny" and sits on my right sleeve.
My Art is "Vanity" on my wrist...But don't think of "Vanity" as in the word "Vain", look at it as in outer image obsessed. Which is what I am, and also what my career as a hair stylist is. I love my tattoo and what it means to me, I hope you like it too.
Two for one today!
First comes to us from Tricia:
Tricia is a big fan of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas so much so that she even free handed a few of the characters for her awesome back tattoo.
The other picture has three characters from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. The text is supposed to be read as followed: (Jack)Sit together now and forever (Sally) for it is plain as anyone can see (Zero) we're simply ment to be. Which is the last sentence sang in the movie.
my name is Elisa and I am from Bologna, an Italian city.
This tattoo on my right calf/ankle was made in July 2008 and I decided to have it done to honor my father's memory.
Andrea was his name, he died on December 25th in 1994 when he was only 44 and I was 16.
He was diagnosed with a form of dystrophy back in 1976, a disease that finally got to him because his heart was weakened throughout all those years.
My father was my best friend, the person I look up to and the role model I wanted to follow. I still try to be like him, laughing and finding good things among the worse ones and reasons to be strong and never surrender even when everything seems lost. He will never be forgotten and this tattoo, featuring my "crazy" creative part, is a tribute to the great man and father he was.
Today’s tattoo comes to us from Brittany. Though she may not realize it, this is literary since it is a popular title to several different songs (including my own personal favorite by the Irish girl-band B*Witched)
When I was a little girl, my sister and I used to cry and whine about the little things like not sharing a Barbie or wanting the same kind of everything but we couldn't have the same. My grandma used to always tell us "C'est la vie! Life is never fair!" Typical of an old french-creole woman!
A few weeks ago I graduated from high school. A huge milestone in life. One of my close friends and I decided to both get tattooed. I got "c'est la vie" to mark graduating and going into the world alone and also to mark my grandma's favorite saying when things weren't going our way. Things in life will never be fair and you just have to deal with it, that's life!
Sorry for the delay guys, I’ve been too wrapped up in the World Cup recently to post…
By the way, did you see this amazing goal?! http://soccernet-akamai.espn.go.com/report?id=264048&cc=5901&ver=us
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Anyway…back to business
Today’s tattoo comes from Alex, who is a huge Paramore fan. http://www.paramore.net
The tattoo is the title of their song “Let the Flames Begin”
“A memory remains just a tiny spark
I give it all my oxygen
To let the flames begin
So let the flames begin”
Another first today…and I’m very excited about this one…
Today marks the first in the pictorial/portrait LTs (literary tattoos)!
Karina, from Brazil, sent in this picture for all of us to admire:
I don’t know if there’s a cute story behind it, but I have a tattoo of Johnny Depp’s Sweeney Todd!
He’s one of the best actors around and this character is amazing!
He is a man in love and in pain at the same time.
I guess of all us have a Sweeney Todd inside, and he showed us really well.
As I've said before, literary is not limited to books alone. Movies, for example, come from written material. And so today's tattoo, submitted from Caitlin, comes to us from the world of film.
this is my back tattoo, it was inspired by the movie The Crow. The reason I gotthe "It can't rain all the time" is because since the age of 12 (im 18 now) I have grown up without my mom, and through the years I have had other family members die. And like everyone else, I have my times where I feel depressed. So having "It can't rain all the time" is a reminder that things get better, and being sad is normal, and won't last forever. Plus I have always loved crows :D
And now back to the literary tattoos… :)
Dominique shows us her unique quote from a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay:
This is my tattoo of a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote from his 1841 essay Self Reliance. Emerson is one of my favorite writers and this is my favorite piece by him. This is my motto in life and I'm happy everyday knowing it's on my shoulder with me wherever I go.
If you haven't read Self Reliance, you can read it here; http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till."
As promised today is a free for all...meaning any tattoo was welcome to be submitted, not just literary. So we got a few great submissions and I can't wait to share! Thanks to everyone, and don't forget you can still submit your literary tattoos anytime to literarytattoo@yahoo.com
okay, here we go:
I knew instantly I had to share Catherine's story, especially since I have such a similar one with my best friend.
I got my tattoo July 3rd 2009, a little over 2 years after I had lost my best friend. My tattoo says RIP when I show it to someone, but when I'm looking down my arm at it I see JAT, my best friends initials. I lost my best friend in a drunk driving accident less than 3 miles from our house. He called me at 1:45am Mothers day 2007 (5-13-2007) saying, "Hey! Come meet me at muchos! Lets hang out!"...I hadn't talked to him in almost 6 months. He was going around a VERY sharp s-curve and didn't make the last corner, he went off the side of the road and off of a probably 50 ft drop straight into a tree. The car burst into flames and he died on impact, it was 2:15AM.
I went to work the next day knowing nothing of the events of the night before, it was mothers day and I worked at a retirement home...we had a very busy brunch. My best friend called me and said, "Have you heard about Jeff?" and I told her I was at work and didn't have time to talk...and that what she heard had to have been a lie that I had just talked to him the night before. After 3 other calls I finally got worried. I called the mother of his son and asked her why people were telling me he was dead, all she said was "he is". I lost it. I instantly burst into tears.
I chose to get this tattoo for him because I knew that he would have thought it was 'cool' lol. He had quite a few tattoos himself and was always wanting more. I knew that when I was going to get a tattoo for him that it couldn't be just some plain RIP or wings, it had to mean something to me, and it would have to live up his expectations.
I searched for over a year and a half for something that fit, and nothing meant enough to me. When I came across ambigrams, which means "a typographical creation that presents two or more separate words within the same physical space" (www.ambigram.com), I knew I had found something special.
The day I got the tattoo I cried, not because it hurt (even though it didn't feel the best lol) but because I knew that for the rest of my life I was going to be able to tell people the story of my amazing best friend and how he touched not only my life but the lives of others.
This is my first tattoo and it means alot to me not only because it was my first but because i got it in memory of my grandfather who passed away from stomach cancer. I chose dominos because it was his favorite game and he always told me that dominos is like life you start the game w/ a double 6 and even tho there isnt any specific way of starting out life you should always try to start out with the right foot and to see your goals as the double 6 domino you lay it down and go for it.
t is inspired my my mom's mom, my Meemaw Barbara. She always wore red lipstick. She would never leave the house without makeup on. That's where I get being girly from! Hope you like this tattoo. It is certainly one of my favs! It means so much. My mother says my Meemaw would have loved the tattoo. Which makes me even more happy.
It's "love" in my mom's handwriting on the back of my neck. This photo was taken right after I got it done on Janurary 9 2009. She is very much alive so it's not a memorial tattoo, it's just to remind me that despite all our problems and how often we fight she still loves me. And she's a pain in my neck :)
So I'm another tattoo'd chick. I think it's awesome that more and more women are decorating and expressing ourselves through body art.
The first is a dragon that wraps around my shoulders and across the top of my back. Its part of a back piece that my artist and I are working on .. when complete it'll be a dragon on the top for strength and power and a phoenix below for femininity and beauty coming together in balance. But it's special to me because I've been through a lot in my life and shows me I can still be strong.
The second is a butterfly on my wrist. My older sister and I were very close and when she died, my little sister and I wanted to get something that would sort of bind us together. So we decided on some body art and she picked out the blue butterfly. We've both gone the same one in the same place :)
SPECIAL EDITION SATURDAY!! This Saturday I’m breaking my own rules. Don’t have a literary tattoo, but want your art featured on the blog? Well, here’s your chance. This Saturday only I will be featuring 5 “non-literary” tattoos on the site. So if you want to share your body art with the online community please send in your pictures and stories to literarytattoo@yahoo.com
CALLING ALL LITERARY TATTOOS! I’m running dangerously low on new content for the blog. Don’t you want to see your fantastic art on the blog?
Want to see your friends or families body art, too? Spread the word!
Put it in a video, tell your roommates, mention it in another blog…whatever you want to do, but I need content! :)
Send in your literary art to literarytattoo@yahoo.com
Speaking of danger…Melissa’s tattoo has a sting:
“My inspiration was the German rock band The Scorpions. It is the name of their album from 1984 which is also the same year I was born. They are my favorite band ever!”
SPECIAL EDITION SATURDAY!!
This Saturday I’m breaking my own rules. Don’t have a literary tattoo, but want your art featured on the blog? Well, here’s your chance. This Saturday only I will be featuring 5 “non-literary” tattoos on the site. So if you want to share your body art with the online community please send in your pictures and stories to literarytattoo@yahoo.com
Meghan sent me this touching story along with her sparrow tattoo:
"when i was about 11 my mom and step dad got married. he was the most loving man.
he had cancer for almost 10 years, he had non hodgkin's lymphoma.
he'd been holding strong for the longest making small goals to achieve like when i started high school, 'i want to see you graduate,'
then my jr year he had 5 heart attacks in one day but still said 'im going to watch you walk across that stage and get your diploma.'
he always told me and my younger sister 'all you need to remember in life is you always need respect and responsibility' i still can hear it...
on nov 19 2009 he passed away.
i decided about a year before he passed to get a tattoo for him i told him i was going to get a tattoo for him its going to say 'respect' ...he loved the thought
me, my best friend amanda, and my mom all went down and got tattoos together ..."
want to see your tattoo on the blog? Make sure and send your literary body art to literarytattoo@yahoo.com
Today’s tattoo comes from Rachael…see if you can guess her favorite book of all time :)
Alice in Wonderland is officially on DVD in July
Yes, even the Bible is considered literary lol :)
Dana sent this picture of her tattoo:
from 1 Corintihians
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails."
Today’s tattoo comes with a very touching story:
This was my first tattoo. It reads "I will never falter", lyrics from a song by A Day To Remember. I got this tattoo because it's my reminder to hold my ground and stand up for what I think is right. I also got it for my boyfriend, Ryan, who passed away from Acute Myeloid Leukemia almost three years ago at the age of 19. Even after all he had to go through, he stayed strong until the very end; and I still admire him for that. I will always love him, and this tattoo gives me the strength to get through the hard times. This is, and always will be, my favorite tattoo :)
So now you'll know
exactly what it feels like
to be an obstacle in my way
You won't remain
save your breath don't even speak
if you'll speak of change
cause you wont
cut to the chase, spare me the lecture
on what it takes to make a man
cause you're weak, and I'm strong
I will never falter
I'll stand my ground
You're a fake, a worthless coward
your life won't mean anything
*I’m going to assume the author of the email is choosing to remain anonymous since she didn’t leave her name.
Thanks for sending your pics again everyone! You can still (and always) submit, send your pics and story to literarytattoo@yahoo.com
Today's submission from Brittani is the first foreign language literary tattoo to grace the blog. It is a line from Virgil's epic Eclogues
she says: My tattoo is on my collar bone and it is from a line in Eclogues, which is a series of poems by Virgil (Publius Vergilius Marco), a Latin Poet. I'm getting the rest of the quote tattooed on my right hand from my ring finger to another tattoo that says "Love" on my wrist.
Ómnia vincit amor; et nos cedamus amori.
Translation: Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to love.
Today’s feature is from Lauren.
When I think of Edgar Allan Poe I usually remember the classic “Raven” or “Annabel Lee”, but Lauren has chosen to be inked with another line from one of Poe’s memorable poems.
” Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream."
…and while not exactly literary Mallory’s tattoos are still unique enough to gain a feature.
She describes them as:
” music notes that form a star and a heart (cause i wear my heart on my sleeve and music helps me cope/deal with problems in my life)”
