What Does Mine Say?!

If you get the reference in this blog post's title, then you must enjoy quoting awesomely bad movies as much as I do.

Earlier this summer, I went down to Orlando to visit two of my cousins who live there. My cousins and I are very close, so I usually try to get down there a few times a year. This particular occasion was especially exciting because our other cousin, Shannon, was visiting from Seattle. Among us cousins, four of the six of us are on the east coast, but the other two live in Washington. Pretty much any time one of the west coasters comes to our time zone, the rest of us will come to them. Shannon came to Orlando, so my sister and I came to her. Five of the six of us had planned a week full of more antics than usual, as this was no ordinary trip. Shannon hadn't just come to Florida for the heck of it...she was making a pilgrimage to Epcot. You see, it was Shannon's 21st birthday.

At the Poly the night before...so Shannon could buy a glass (bottle?) of wine at midnight! Why are we all making the same face? Yep, just a normal family photo.

Along with our plans to drink celebrate, we also had something significant planned...something that was several years in the making. When our oldest cousin, Mark, passed away in 2005 after a battle with Hodgkin's lymphoma, the rest of us talked about getting tattoos together to honor him. Mark created Freekware, a clothing company with a message of unity through positivity and individuality (you may have heard me talk about it on here, I don't know, once or twice). The Freekware logo has come to symbolize so much to us cousins. When we decided to get together for Shannon's birthday, we decided to finally get our tattoos...and it was no question that all of us would somehow include the message of Freekware and/or the logo itself.

I wanted the Freekware symbol, but I wanted it to be incorporated into something else...and I wanted that something else to have some kind of movement to it. While perusing through Pinterest one day, I became enamored with dandelion tattoos. I know dandelions don't seem to symbolize much...I mean, they're weeds. But that means they're resilient and can take root anywhere. Plus, they always remind me of one of my favorite Disney scenes of all time.

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Once I had the idea of making the Freekware logo one of the dandelion seeds, it was only a matter of finding the right dandelion to show to the tattoo artist. My favorite ones had the stem in line with the shoulder blade with seeds floating towards the arm...

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...but then I found a few examples that had text along the stem.

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Since I had also played with the idea of including the Freekware symbol in a verse, I decided to have this verse trace along the stem:

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Once I had gathered all of my sources of inspiration, it was time for us to head out to get inked!

Shannon got a black Freekware symbol on her left shoulder blade.

Michelle got the words "Stay Positive" over a hibiscus flower. Her husband, an artist, created the design!

Jen got a blue Freekware logo on her left hip.

Amanda got a black Freekware logo on her right shoulder blade.

Here's how mine turned out!

Each of us had a different response to the inking process - some of us developed that "ink addiction" and are already talking about a next tattoo. I was not one of those people. It didn't hurt as badly as I thought it would, but it certainly wasn't comfortable. It was more like a nails-on-a-chalkboard sensation for me, and I definitely don't need to do that again! But we had a lot of fun together that day, and now we have a lasting reminder of it. I love how each of us got something slightly different, but they all have the same sentiment behind them.

Do you have a tattoo? What's the story behind it?