Got a cosplay idea but the character has lots of arm (or leg) tattoos? Don’t feel like painting on yourself with body paints or hunting down that horrendously expensive temporary tattoo paper? Here’s a quick tutorial for making tattoo sleeves using nylons and sharpie markers!
Upsides:
- Supplies are cheap! You may even have many or all the supplies you need right at home.
- Quick and not very messy! No paint is involved, and sharpie marker dries instantly.
- Easy! Great artistic skill not required.
- They move with your skin! People have legit thought these were real tattoos. From a distance, yes, but I had guys at cons with actual ink on their arms come over to compliment on my full (fake) sleeves.
- You get to eat pringles! More on that later.
Downsides:
- They are delicate. Nylons get holes in them super easy and forearms run into stuff, lean against things, and generally make it hard for the sleeves to survive. But if you only need them for a weekend, that’s ok.
- I haven’t experimented too much, but unfortunately this technique probably doesn’t work for wearers with darker skin tones. Sharpie ink is transparent, so any color it rests on just multiplies and the tattoo won’t show up very well. You’ll want to go the fabric paint or body paint route to get the best bold, bright tats.
- Can’t do white sections, because sharpie ink is transparent and doesn’t come in white. I leave them blank and they read OK, but the white areas will always be pink, tan, brown, etc. unless you dab in a little fabric paint, which will not be covered in this tutorial.
- Sharpie is supposed to be permanent marker, but on skin…it’s not. The ink will most likely wear off onto adjacent clothes. Not that big of a deal for me, as I tend to wear my tats with white shirts that can be bleached, but other shirts may not survive as well.
OK, let’s go! Here are your supplies:
You’ll need a pair of nylons, scissors, tape, a set of sharpies, your designs printed out on 8.5 x 11 paper, some bracelets, and a can of Pringles. You can use any design you want, of course, but Here is the link to these fine Newt Kaiju tattoo designs.
If your nylons have an undies part, cut the legs off and wear the undies on your head for the rest of the tutorial, if desired. Put the legs on your arm like so, and cut the toes off so you can slip your hand through. You can cut some of the top of the sleeve off as well, but don’t cut too much because you can’t put it back on if your sleeves are too short.
Here are my creepy sleeves. Now for the pringles.
Tape your design template to the Pringles can. It doesn’t reach all the way around but eh. The Pringles can gives you a nice stable surface to draw on that is roughly the shape and size of an arm. It’s a little short, so just roll up the rest of the nylon above the workspace and adjust both template and nylon down when you get to working on that part of the sleeve.
Color with the markers! I recommend doing the colored areas first and then doing the black outlines on top of it, to avoid the black ink contaminating the ink pads of the lighter markers. Remember how that always happens to the yellow ones? Eww. Nylons are thin and slide around a bit, so it’s best to use short strokes and dotting to get the ink on.
Take the template off the Pringles tube, flip the paper to the blank side and put it back on again. The paper collects the extra ink, so it’s hard to see any missed spots. Now you can see any bits you may have missed. Fill them in for completion. Also, the paper doesn’t manage to wrap all the way around the Pringles can, so now is the time to free-hand a bit of the design where the template doesn’t reach. For Newt tattoos, that’s the back of the arm.
When you’re all done coloring, put them on!
There’s a rough end to the tattoo right at the wrist, of course. Disguise where the sleeve ends and your skin begins with some pretty bracelets:
There we are, much better!
Now…you’re done! Have some Pringles!
SLAMS THE REBLOG BUTTON
from a tattooist perspective: use the navy sharpie not the black or blue for your lines, they will look like healed black ink.
This is amazing. Particularly “if your nylons have an undies part, cut the legs off and wear the undies on your head for the rest of the tutorial, if desired.”
Seconded: reblogging fore awesome and for head panty.
Not surprisingly, this is Loki approved. He loves it. Now I have a painless and temporary way to try tattoos (reasons I said no). He’s scheming. Damn you.
Anonymous asked: I keep hearing conflicting info about whether Jade is or isn't Dave and Karkat's neighbor. Some people are saying it's proven that she lives with them, but others including you are saying that she lives next door. Do you have any proof?
the main thing is that theres a hive next to them with green awnings that doesnt match either olive, limeblood or jade colored trolls and that look really blobby compared to the triangles/rectangles of the other visible hives
when you color correct the color on karkats hive in the same snap to his original color at the same rate as the green, you effectively end up with jades color too (i didnt make it match 100% exactly cause theres video compression to take into account but that looks p definitive to me)
but hey i went full fucking BKEW and slapped this together for you anon
in conclusion: im 80% sure that jade is their neighbor that hangs out with them often, and her hive has been fucking taken over by plants Habitat (1997) style
me when i was 12: ‘power of friendship’ stories are so lame and cliche like who cares its just a dumb plot device it’d never work :/
me now: My Love For My Friends Could Topple Cities. It Could Fell Empires. It Could Kill the Gods Themselves But It Won’t Because Then We’d Have Nowhere To Hang Out
dingelchen asked: What writing system are you refering to with ur quote "the earliest writing systems found were dated around 34,000 bce"?
shit i meant 3400 not 34000. what i was refering to was hte ancient sumerians who had glyphs on tablets. it’s the earliest known written language. the furry statue predates is by around 35k years
