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Tattoo History
Tattoo Overview
Tattoo Deciding
Tattoo Design
Tattoo Meaning
Finding Tattooist
Final Decision
Tattoo Science
Getting Inked
What Next
Tattoo Q&A Before
Tattoo Q&A After
Tattoo Safety
Becoming Tattooist

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Finding The Right Design

There are three ways of coming up with a design for your tattoo.

From the books of Flash that the tattooist will have on display.
The tattooist can create or adapt a design for you.
You can have an original design created for you by someone else and take that to the tattooist.

Flash Art

Tattoo Flash is pre-existing designs that are produced by professional designers and distributed by companies around the world. These are the designs that you'll see all around the walls of the tattoo shop when you walk in or in huge books scattered around the place. You can get just about every conceivable design in these collections. Take your time to look through them, even if you're thinking about having a custom design. The Flash images will give you plenty of ideas and, just as important, will give you some basis for what is and isn't possible in a tattoo.

Custom Designs By A Tattoo Artist

Most tattooists are wonderfully talented artists and they usually love the challenge of creating a design from scratch [no pun intended]. If you have an idea that you can't find in any of the Flash collections or if you're sure that it's something entirely personal to you, talk to the tattooist and see what they say. Make a few sketches or, if you have no artistic ability yourself, find an image that's similar and take that in to help the design process. Listen to what the artist has to say and take note of their ideas. If you like and trust the tattooist, give them some latitude and see what they come up with; you'll probably get a tattoo that's even better than you imagined.

Custom Designs By A Third Party

If you have some artistic ability or if you know someone who does, you could have your tattoo designed before you even walk in to a tattoo shop. You'll need to have some idea of what is and isn't possible for the tattooist to do so be prepared to be flexible with the final design.

Go to Every Tattoo Means Something