Jane's Story
Jane has been a friend of mine since the beginning of the spring semester last year. The thing that first caught my attention about her was her love for my favorite hockey team, which was obvious by her assortment of team tee-shirts. But the next thing that drew me toward Jane was her love for tattoos; a love she shows more proudly and more regularly than even her love for her hockey team!

At the time I met Jane, she had 9 tattoos, all clearly seen on her left arm. She now has 11 tattoos, with her latest standing alone on her right arm…for now.

“I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to get a tattoo, you should be able to see it!” Jane says.

“If you’re investing that much money…and that much ‘pain’ to get something, I at least want to be able to see it every day.”

The tattoo that she says gets the most compliments is that of three flowers on her left forearm. She says they are also her favorite from an artistic standpoint because, though they lack color, those flowers pop with detail. This tattoo not only looks great, but it also has an incredible meaning behind it.

Jane loves her family, so she knew she wanted a tattoo for them. However, she wanted to get something different than just their names or something like that. After brainstorming for a while, she decided to get the flowers that correspond with the months in which her mom, dad and older brother were born.

The rose represents her brother who was born in June. Then the carnation stands for her dad whose birthday is in January, and the larkspur is the flower of July, the month in which her mom was born.

She trusted her tattoo artist in the process of designing the tattoo, because she says she is not creative.

“As long as the main concept of the tattoo is there, the artist can handle the creativity part,” she says. “I feel like that is their privilege as an artist to be able to do that.”

She says that her tattoo artist drew the flowers several times in order to get the detail, size and arrangement just right. And once he did, it took nearly 3 hours to tattoo them on her.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about that tattoo, but Jane has so many other stories represented on her arm. Take a look at the pictures below and tell me which ones you would be most interested in hearing about! Thanks so much for reading this story behind the ink!