Once you’re all set and ready for the tattoo itself to be inked onto your skin, the fun is about to begin!. Like a dentists office, with all the instruments laid out and in place, and the working area all prepped and ready to go, there is only one final preparation that needs to be carried out before the ink can actually be put on your skin, though, and it is one that is crucially important.

In a nutshell, it’s called stenciling.

After all, you wouldn’t want your tattoo artist to just freehand draw the design onto your skin with ink, would you! Instead, they’re going to need some frame of reference to follow, and that means that the design needs to be transferred onto your skin so that the tattoo artist can then use it to produce the tattoo that you desire!

Once upon a time, the design had to be painstakingly traced onto the skin, but nowadays most studios use a newer, more advanced method, a machine that streamlines the process called a thermal-fax that makes stenciling a simple matter. This saves on literally hours of tracing time by simply inserting your tattoo design into the machine which then transfers it onto a special thermal paper within seconds. Once the stencil is ready, all that’s needed to be done is use special thermal paper to transfer the design directly onto your skin, and you should be good to go!

When the paper is pulled away from your skin, it will leave a purple-ish blue likeness of the future tattoo in the area that will be worked on. This is a very exciting time as once this stenciled outline is in place, it’s time to really create the outline – and that means starting to use ink. As you’ll discover, the outline is the very first part of your tattoo that needs to be taken care of, and for good reason too. After all, it is going to provide the structure for the rest of your tattoo as well.

We recommend that you relax and find something to distract yourself with… maybe a magazine or some music on your iPod. Line work may be somewhat painful at the beginning, but that’s just because your body needs time to adapt. In a relatively short time you’ll start to see the makings of your tattoo come alive as it starts to take form … and color… on your body. Dream about flaunting your new “statement” and that will help you to cope with the slight discomfort you’ll be experiencing which seems to go with the territory. knowing that the end result is that soon you’ll be sporting the exact tattoo you’ve been picturing for a while now. Good job!