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Regret my Half Sleeve
Hi all,
I stumbled across this site when I was looking for some reassurance that I’m not the only one who regrets a tattoo. I have around 30ish tattoos now and I love them all even the old ones that aren’t really ‘me’ anymore. But I had some song lyrics on my arm that really weren’t me and decided to get it covered, as I’m getting married in October I wanted it doing before them.
I settled on a design of the corpse bride in a vintage frame and found a tattooist in my new home town who had amazing reviews. I’d also been looking at getting another tattoo of a Pokemon on the upper part of my arm. This is pretty much where the nightmare began that’s left me with tons of anxiety, depression, not wanting to leave the house and at times wishing my own arm didn’t exist.
When I went in to see the artist he told me he could do both tattoos if I booked in for a full day session. I showed him what I wanted covering and also the ideas I had. He said they were fine. I followed this up by emailing him the photos and a photo of what I wanted covering. Still fine. Gets to the actual day and he tells me there’s no way the framed corpse bride will cover the writing. He says I’ll need a full corpse bride in darker colours. I accept this because I understand cover ups are difficult.
He also tells me I need it on the outside of the arm not the inside and that he’ll then incorporate some scenery to cover the writing properly. I trusted his expertise, first mistake. I have a lot of moles on the outside of my arm so I asked that these weren’t covered for obvious reasons.
7 hours later he tells me we’re finished. I have a corpse bride on my arm with then a thick black line shading in part of the writing. Half the writing is still there plain to see the rest you can still kind of see through this black shading. He’d covered 3 miles (hard for me to tell at the time because obviously the ink and blood smears everywhere) and cut into a large mole with the needle so it was hanging half off and bleeding A LOT. I asked why it was finished and he tells me I need to come back and pay again to have it made into a full half sleeve. I said I never wanted a half sleeve he tells me I do??? Obviously at this point I’m fuming but to be honest after 7 hours of tattooing I’m tired, hungry and weak and to be completely honest the tattoo was a great looking piece of art. So I decide to go home and think about it.
Two weeks later it finishes healing the mole has grown back with a huge black dot in the centre, the other three miles have also changed shape and size, I have a doctors appointment re this as it’s whats causing the most anxiety. The tattoo itself has healed terribly. The colour has lost all vibrancy, there’s thick scarring running through it and ink missing in places frankly it’s a mess he’s clearly gone too deep and been too rough I’ve got a fair few big tattoos and none of them scabbed like this one or scarred at all. In the end I travelled to my hometown and got my old tattooist to try and improve it, he added victor to the inside of my arm and added more black shading which he then ran blue butterflies through to complete the cover up.
Basically I feel stuck now, I love the victor part and even the shading with the butterflies but everytime I look at the corpse bride with all the scarring, the damaged moles and the faded colours I just feel physically sick. I’m not sleeping at night worrying about it, I’m stressed and frightened worrying about the potential repercussions of covering moles with ink, it itches constantly and even with factor 30 suncream it burns immediately when exposed to sunlight.
I’m now wondering if my best option is laser but the sheer cost of laser on something this big (photos attached) and the dark colours, plus I’ve read that layering can be linked to skin cancer when you have moles too so I could make it even worse! Any advice from anyone who has been in a similar situation?
I stumbled across this site when I was looking for some reassurance that I’m not the only one who regrets a tattoo. I have around 30ish tattoos now and I love them all even the old ones that aren’t really ‘me’ anymore. But I had some song lyrics on my arm that really weren’t me and decided to get it covered, as I’m getting married in October I wanted it doing before them.
I settled on a design of the corpse bride in a vintage frame and found a tattooist in my new home town who had amazing reviews. I’d also been looking at getting another tattoo of a Pokemon on the upper part of my arm. This is pretty much where the nightmare began that’s left me with tons of anxiety, depression, not wanting to leave the house and at times wishing my own arm didn’t exist.
When I went in to see the artist he told me he could do both tattoos if I booked in for a full day session. I showed him what I wanted covering and also the ideas I had. He said they were fine. I followed this up by emailing him the photos and a photo of what I wanted covering. Still fine. Gets to the actual day and he tells me there’s no way the framed corpse bride will cover the writing. He says I’ll need a full corpse bride in darker colours. I accept this because I understand cover ups are difficult.
He also tells me I need it on the outside of the arm not the inside and that he’ll then incorporate some scenery to cover the writing properly. I trusted his expertise, first mistake. I have a lot of moles on the outside of my arm so I asked that these weren’t covered for obvious reasons.
7 hours later he tells me we’re finished. I have a corpse bride on my arm with then a thick black line shading in part of the writing. Half the writing is still there plain to see the rest you can still kind of see through this black shading. He’d covered 3 miles (hard for me to tell at the time because obviously the ink and blood smears everywhere) and cut into a large mole with the needle so it was hanging half off and bleeding A LOT. I asked why it was finished and he tells me I need to come back and pay again to have it made into a full half sleeve. I said I never wanted a half sleeve he tells me I do??? Obviously at this point I’m fuming but to be honest after 7 hours of tattooing I’m tired, hungry and weak and to be completely honest the tattoo was a great looking piece of art. So I decide to go home and think about it.
Two weeks later it finishes healing the mole has grown back with a huge black dot in the centre, the other three miles have also changed shape and size, I have a doctors appointment re this as it’s whats causing the most anxiety. The tattoo itself has healed terribly. The colour has lost all vibrancy, there’s thick scarring running through it and ink missing in places frankly it’s a mess he’s clearly gone too deep and been too rough I’ve got a fair few big tattoos and none of them scabbed like this one or scarred at all. In the end I travelled to my hometown and got my old tattooist to try and improve it, he added victor to the inside of my arm and added more black shading which he then ran blue butterflies through to complete the cover up.
Basically I feel stuck now, I love the victor part and even the shading with the butterflies but everytime I look at the corpse bride with all the scarring, the damaged moles and the faded colours I just feel physically sick. I’m not sleeping at night worrying about it, I’m stressed and frightened worrying about the potential repercussions of covering moles with ink, it itches constantly and even with factor 30 suncream it burns immediately when exposed to sunlight.
I’m now wondering if my best option is laser but the sheer cost of laser on something this big (photos attached) and the dark colours, plus I’ve read that layering can be linked to skin cancer when you have moles too so I could make it even worse! Any advice from anyone who has been in a similar situation?