Years of Research, Instant Regret - Charlotte, NC

My story is quite a long one, and I had no intention of actually writing a review on here but your stories and photos have helped me so much I have to! Long story short(er), I needed a cover up of a tattoo I loved and had for years, for travel/cultural reasons. It was my first and done by a famous artist, I loved it instantly, never regretted it. When I decided to get it covered, I decided to begin the process of a full sleeve. I wanted to go to the same artist of course. I called his shop and was told he only did black & grey work now and he starts at $1,000. He is very famous at this point, I figured that was true and didn't question it. Sticker shock scared me, even though I had the money, I wasn't ready to spend that much on just one portion of the sleeve. Hindsight, I should have just called the guy myself and explained what I wanted to do. I ended up going to an artist at the same shop who I followed for years. I liked his work and the receptionist said he would be the best for what I wanted; a floral cover up. This place is a 4 hour drive for me, so this definitely wasn't done hastily. I got the cover up done in January and initially loved it. Weeks later, I noticed how dark it was. Especially from afar, it just looks like a huge blacked out piece. I had planned to stop there for now; not continue the sleeve until I was done traveling abroad. But it felt so incomplete. It was begging for more work. My second appointment (2 weeks ago) is where the regret began. Drove 4 hours again, the artist and I spoke at length about what I wanted this time, pics & everything. I felt comfortable letting him choose the colors again because he did a great job with that the first time, despite all the black in it. I thought that was just necessary because it was cover up. I stressed to him I wanted this part to be very bright to contrast the darkness of the other side. 5 hours later, I had three pretty flowers I chose, but not colors I would have picked. Because of the angle, I really couldn't see much while he was tattooing. I did see him pull out blue ink and said, I didn't want blue. I'd prefer yellow. He said he'd put yellow in it. When I saw it in the mirror at the shop I liked it. The next morning, remorse set in. I wanted them to be 3 distinctly different colors, & the first two are very similar. The blue one I hated immediately since I didn't want blue in the first place. Apparently my skin didn't either because it rejected most of the ink. I knew something was wrong because it seeped a lot, was very painful and had thick scabs. The rest of healed fine. I let the artist know about the ink reaction and initially thought I'd just have him go over it again in purple. As the days went on I started to dislike the entire thing. I was losing sleep, getting depressed, feeling so stupid and too old (I'm in my 30's) and too smart (I had done so much research) to make such a huge mistake. I wanted my bare arm back. I wanted a time machine to go back to January! I typed "tattoo remorse" into google and ended up on this site. I didn't even know tattoos could be removed! I found a place with a picosure laser in my city after learning on here that would be the best option for all my colors. I had a free consult today, it went well but they didn't have very many before/afters to show me and none on brown skin. I wanted to know costs for full removal vs lightening for a cover up. I was quoted 6 treatments at $320 each to remove the blurry blue "flower" and all the black on the inner forearm. The consultant said it probably would be another thousand to fully remove it all and a different laser would have to be used because of the red in the flowers. While this is still a huge expense I didn't plan for, I thought it would be upwards of $5-6,000. Of course I know this isn't an exact science and it may actually take 10-12 treatments. I decided to start with a partial removal, and go from there. I talked to the famous artist and he said I was the first person to ever get his work covered and it was embarrassing for him. I felt horrible! He is very selective about his clients now so I'm grateful he agreed to work on me again if I decide to continue the cover up//sleeve. Thanks to all of you who shared your stories and pics, I feel like I know what to expect. I have to wait 6 weeks for my first tx since my tat is new. Any advice you all have I'm here for it!