One Tattoo To Rule Them All

It's been over a year and a half since I got my last Tattoo (R2D2) and I've been wanting this one since the beginning of the year. My buddy Moose (who I have known since I was 11 and he was 8) is the tattoo artist and he's been super busy and our schedules haven't meshed. Then I'd forget about it and months would pass and then we'd try to get together again and nothing. Finally a month ago we booked today to do it... finally.

You might ask why not just go to another tattoo artist, well he did my Hogwarts and R2D2 and he is fantastic. I only trust him to ink me. This is permanent and it needs to be right the first time.

So the other big thing is that he lives in Hemet which is 2 1/2 hours from my place. So I left my place at 3pm in order to get to his place by 6pm (I wasn't sure how traffic was going to be). My GPS took me through the back way and I avoided all traffic.. it was great. Got his place around 5:30 and grabbed some dinner before heading to his place by 6pm.

This tattoo represents my love for Lord of the Rings. I've enjoyed the books since I was a kid and with the movies it's elevated my love to that of Star Wars and Star Trek. When I was thinking of a LOTR tattoo I knew I wanted "One Ring To Rule Them All" saying in elvish. My first thought was to have it like a band running around my upper arm. Then I was looking at pictures online and saw it in a circle and actually liked the look of that better, the only thing it left alot of space in the middle. I thought about putting Hobbit feet in there since Hobbits are my favorite characters from the story. But having chopped off hairy feet in the middle of the circle didn't appeal to me...  I noticed that best friend Josh had J.R.R. Tolkien initials on his shoulder, it's a great combination of all four letters into one symbol and I thought it would look great in the space in the middle of the circle... so that's what I went with.

First thing we did was put some numbing get on my arm. This was the first time Moose and I were trying this stuff out.. it said it needed to wait and hour to get the full effect. We waited until 7 and then proceeded with the tattoo. Certain parts of my arm were somewhat numb but I felt about 85% of the needle and as the night went on I felt more and more of it. Still my arms (Hogwarts & LOTR) didn't hurt nearly as much as my leg (R2D2).

Both of my previous tattoos took a little over 3 hours, this one took almost 4 hours. I'm afraid what my next one will take :)

I'm extremely happy with the outcome, it's not exactly what I imagined but I think it's fantastic. I was looking for it to be burning out of my skin and though that's not exactly happening, it does look red hot and raised out of my skin.. which I love.

Next up will be Star Trek.. still working on what I want..