††: November 2010

So last week I ruined my foot forever and decided to document the event by writing this DIY tattoo tutorial on how to put ink into your skin yourself and make your parents think that you are an idiot.

Okay these are what I used. A needle (obviously), A pencil to tie the needle too, cotton thread, alcohol swabs to be sterile or whatever (although I think maybe surgical spirits would have been a better choice), A koki pen to draw your plans on, Ink, a cup for the ink and medical supplies for afterwards.

If someone else is doing it for you/more than one of you is doing it you will need a different ink well, a pair of gloves and new needle/device for each person so you don't get infected with HIV germs or whatever. This is South Africa after all and we could really do with less dead people.

So, after I had sterilized it I tied the needle tightly to the pencil with the thread.

Then after doing a few half hitches at the top to keep it tight, I started coiling the thread around the needle (like a guitar string). You will need to coil it all the way so that there is about 0.5-1mm of needle showing at the top.

The thread acts a s a way to keep the ink on the needle so you don't have too keep dipping for every hole you poke. It does reduce accuracy a bit though, You'll see later what I mean...

Then I cleaned where I was going to stick the needle in. My apologies in advance for the siff feet.

Then you start sticking the needle into your skin poking in a rhythmic motion like doing a bunch of O's in Morse-code. This is where I discovered after about a minute that I had not coiled the thread close enough to the needle point and instead of ink going in, blood was just coming out.

So after a quick adjustment I was back on my way and it started working.

A problem with this technique is that excess ink builds up immediately and you can't always see what you are doing and there are these occasional scattered dots that make the tattoo a bit blurry.

And there you have it. Your parents now have a son who tattooed YO on his own toe.

Thanks Justin Southey for taking the photos. Don't do this if you ever intend to wear sandals to a job interview.