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First of all, Happy Thanksgiving!
In the tradition of the holiday, I suppose the thing I am most grateful for is….crafting! No, just kidding. It’s the clichéd stuff like family and friends (so boring, I know). I was originally planning on making some sort of Thanksgiving-related craft for this post, but let’s be honest. Hand turkeys and the like have been done to death. So I’m branching out into something more personal to me. Every year for as long as I can remember, my family and I have been going to the Gulf Coast to spend Thanksgiving in the relative sunshine and good times of an ocean-front hotel – something which also makes the “thankful for” list. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of the beach is all of those hokey, cater-to-tourists, henna tattoo parlors, and running up and down the beaches and boardwalks when I was younger with my cousins, all fake-tattooed because we were just that bad-A. And as it so happens, a couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon a tutorial for doing fake tattoos yourself, and have been looking for an excuse to try it out ever since. So for this Thanksgiving I’m tatting myself up and scaring grandma.
One of the reasons I liked this tutorial (http://charlotteisnotmyname.tumblr.com/post/11523186764/temporary-tattoos-tutorial) was because she used materials that I had on hand. The only thing I had to buy was the liquid bandage. For the design I decided to go with the iconic devil’s trap tattoo from Supernatural, because it’s one of my absolute favorite shows, and I’ve been on a kick rewatching the series. Of course, the downside of this was I decided to put it on my left side instead of on my wrist, reducing the ease of going over it with eyeliner, because to the uniformed viewer it looks slightly satanic, and I don’t need that kind of attention in my life. But anyway, here’s the pencil transfer.
It was extremely easy to trace the design and pencil it in, and it transferred to my skin pretty well with just a couple of seconds of wetting it. The hard part came next, when I was supposed to redraw the design in liquid eyeliner. The placement of the tattoo made it harder to reach than I thought it would, so I asked my mom if she would mind giving me hand. Of course, when I did this I neglected to remember that she’s never used liquid liner in her life, but, bless her heart, she tried. The end result came out a bit wobbly, but I don’t think it looks too bad.
When I get back home, I’m going to try doing the initial outline with a charcoal pencil to see if that will transfer a darker image, because I’d like to be able to skip the eyeliner step entirely. Using a sharpie pen failed miserably. I’ll also let you guys know how long it lasted. Again, the placement choice was a poor one because it’s already starting to crackle. Oh well! Live and learn.
~Emily