#nitheful

ooo yes!! so, i only have two tattoos so it is true that i am definitely not an expert, but from what i have seen looking around/talking to tattoo artists/people who have more tattoos than i do, it seems like a lot of quality tattoo artists will charge somewhere around $200 per hour that you're in the chair + tip (depending on where you live). lettering doesn't take very much time; one of my two is a 7-letter word on my forearm and that took like...i want to say 20 minutes? i don't remember exactly how much i paid for that but it was definitely under $100. probably sw/dw + string wouldn't take much more time than that, and might cost less depending on time/artist. if you have an artist you're interested in, you can def hit them up for a quote as well — what you're suggesting seems probably very easy for them to come up with an estimate for.

(i will say that with lettering it's super important to get someone who can do very tidy line work and to take their recommendations about how large the letters need to be, or else they will become illegible over time as your skin cells shift and stuff)

pain depends on placement and pain tolerance and how much the artist has to go over the same skin repeatedly — there are some useful charts that give estimations of how much different placements hurt around online; idk how accurate they are but i like them haha. small lettering will probably be one pass, so you won't get the pain of like, big lines, then small lines, then coloring/shading or whatever, which will help a lot with that. mine are both in pretty low-pain zones, but i would compare the quality of pain to being scratched by a cat (although i think it hurt somewhat less than that? that's just the type of pain it is imo)

care is not bad i think! especially in placements that don't get a ton of friction (probably hip or ankle or whatever is a lot harder, because of underwear bands and socks and shoes and such rubbing against it? idk). your artist should give you recommendations for taking care of it that works best with their technique, but mostly it's a lot of like, don't scratch it or peel skin off of it (it gets itchy and flaky for a few days which sucks a bit but is fine, especially on tiny lines), keep it out of the sun, keep it moisturized but not smothered, leave the bandage on/rebandage it for 3-5 days, don't go swimming for a couple of weeks at least, etc. i have found it to be pretty whatever to get them to heal (depending on healing/how the session itself goes, you might have to go back in to get a touch up; my snake that i got back in november has a couple of lines that healed kind of fadey...that's pretty common as i understand it; both artists i've been to have offered free touch ups for 6-12mos, so that's pretty chill if you end up needing that)

Thank you! I hope you’re all having a good valentine’s day! Definitely please imagine me coming around with my valentine’s card to put in your decorated shoebox that I painstakingly filled out the night before using the class list (read: tumblr follow list)