how i accidentally discovered what seems to be a pretty wicked tattoo-healing method:
so I got the lightning bolt done on Sat. Sept. 6. following the sage advice and voice of experience (30 and counting, I think) of harlot, i did nothing for the first two days except wash it with unscented soap and lightly pat it dry.
needless to say by the end of those two days, it was feeling pretty tight, sore, etc... i was dying to get some lotion on it. so i did.
only to discover that the lotion i had used for my previous piece (the text on my inner right bicep) apparently contained alcohol - because it stung like a motherfucker when i applied it. and, just my luck, the nearby drug store was closed for the evening.
a few hours later, it dawned on me to use the anti-bacterial ointment (which i had only applied at night with the previous piece) just to get SOME kind of moisture on all that dry, crack-y, sore, peely skin.
fast-forward to the following morning and i'm at said drug-store, looking for a different type of unscented lotion that doesn't contain alcohol. guess what? not. a. single. one. to. be. found. so after almost half an hour of inspecting the ingredient list of every damn bottle and brand of unscented lotion on their shelves, i said "fuck it" and just bought some more of the anti-bacterial ointment instead. i'd discovered already that it lasts a good while after being applied (6-8 hours, and this is on a solid black coloring job, so probably even longer if you're using it on something less "dense") and kept the tat adequately moisturized, so i figured it couldn't hurt anything to use it more frequently.
in case it's obtainable in your neck of the woods and you're interested in trying it, i use this Life-brand Triple Antibiotic Ointment:
as it turned out, it only took about 7-9 days (9 days from getting the tat, 7 days of applying the ointment) for it to pretty much heal up completely. which was WAY faster than i expected.
in addition to the ointment, i'll also attribute the rapid healing to the fact that since i work from home and was barely required to leave the house during that period of time, i was able to go shirtless for the majority of the time. my best guess is that the lack-of-clothing-irritation combined with a large amount of open-air-exposure probably contributed to the quickness of the process.
so, long story short: use anti-bacterial ointment and keep clothing off of your tats as much as possible. seems to have worked well for me, at any rate
there were only two small spots that remained scabby after the initial 9-day period. those took about another 3-4 days to finally fall off. they happened to be in the two "lighter" spots you can see in the pic below, which will need to be re-inked:
but, what's worth pointing out is that the lower light-spot is part of a previous tattoo that got covered by this one. the upper light spot is over a scar i have from picking a chicken-pock off of my chest when i was a kid. in other words, those were likely gonna be problematic spots no matter what.
so, there ya have it: the skullgrid method for rapid tattoo healing
so I got the lightning bolt done on Sat. Sept. 6. following the sage advice and voice of experience (30 and counting, I think) of harlot, i did nothing for the first two days except wash it with unscented soap and lightly pat it dry.
needless to say by the end of those two days, it was feeling pretty tight, sore, etc... i was dying to get some lotion on it. so i did.
only to discover that the lotion i had used for my previous piece (the text on my inner right bicep) apparently contained alcohol - because it stung like a motherfucker when i applied it. and, just my luck, the nearby drug store was closed for the evening.
a few hours later, it dawned on me to use the anti-bacterial ointment (which i had only applied at night with the previous piece) just to get SOME kind of moisture on all that dry, crack-y, sore, peely skin.
fast-forward to the following morning and i'm at said drug-store, looking for a different type of unscented lotion that doesn't contain alcohol. guess what? not. a. single. one. to. be. found. so after almost half an hour of inspecting the ingredient list of every damn bottle and brand of unscented lotion on their shelves, i said "fuck it" and just bought some more of the anti-bacterial ointment instead. i'd discovered already that it lasts a good while after being applied (6-8 hours, and this is on a solid black coloring job, so probably even longer if you're using it on something less "dense") and kept the tat adequately moisturized, so i figured it couldn't hurt anything to use it more frequently.
in case it's obtainable in your neck of the woods and you're interested in trying it, i use this Life-brand Triple Antibiotic Ointment:
as it turned out, it only took about 7-9 days (9 days from getting the tat, 7 days of applying the ointment) for it to pretty much heal up completely. which was WAY faster than i expected.
in addition to the ointment, i'll also attribute the rapid healing to the fact that since i work from home and was barely required to leave the house during that period of time, i was able to go shirtless for the majority of the time. my best guess is that the lack-of-clothing-irritation combined with a large amount of open-air-exposure probably contributed to the quickness of the process.
so, long story short: use anti-bacterial ointment and keep clothing off of your tats as much as possible. seems to have worked well for me, at any rate
there were only two small spots that remained scabby after the initial 9-day period. those took about another 3-4 days to finally fall off. they happened to be in the two "lighter" spots you can see in the pic below, which will need to be re-inked:
but, what's worth pointing out is that the lower light-spot is part of a previous tattoo that got covered by this one. the upper light spot is over a scar i have from picking a chicken-pock off of my chest when i was a kid. in other words, those were likely gonna be problematic spots no matter what.
so, there ya have it: the skullgrid method for rapid tattoo healing
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
i used to always use the brown A&D ointment.
my chest piece was almost all down peeling 4 days after having it done.
It's been less than a week and my arm piece is almost done healing, also, but i didn't use A&D like usual.
it's so weird 'tattoo' stuff....it worked really well...i've never used one of those before.
i tend to heal really fast when i dont run into the ocean like an idiot 2 days later. >.<
I'm not even kidding.
Its like the best thing in the whole fucking world!
....Yeah barrie.... haha.
Toronto is lookin super good right now.
Kinda regret not going there but meh, live and learn right.