Dreams Don’t Work Unless You Do

Jan 30

Written By Stacey

And, sometimes, that means a weekend work date.

Finding time outside of a full-time job to pursue other dreams, is pretty difficult. But, it can be done…and the solution is usually spelled S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y-S.

Now that there is a little more consistency in my home life, I’d like to take on more requests than I have been able to since 2020 rocked my world.

My most recent request was for a tattoo design. I started getting requests for tattoo designs when I started working as an art teacher, lettering around the building. I’ve always declined because I felt like it was out of my comfort zone. Being an artist doesn’t mean you can do everything.

But, since I’ve been seriously pursuing lettering, I’m more comfortable with the idea…as long as I don’t have to do the tattooing. 😂

This tattoo is to memorialize a family member within an infinity heart motif. The words, “valentin pour toujourns”, the initials of the loved one, and their birth and passing dates are to be incorporated into the design as well.

Of course, I started with the lettering! 🥰

Since the client said that she’d be interested in a delicate look to the infinity heart, I wanted to try some delicate tattoo lettering to match. I immediately looked up Em Scott. Her name probably means ‘delicate’ in Greek….and her flourishing is so inventive, it blows my mind!

I first saw her work in The Graphic Art of Tattoo Lettering by BJ Betts. You can see some of her work in the moodboard I made if you scroll a bit down below (that tattoo of ‘california’ almost makes me want to move there).

Side note, if you’re lettering, and you haven’t looked at tattoo lettering, you’re missing out. Tattoo lettering has some of the best modern examples of victorian, calligraphic and expressive lettering styles you’ll ever find.

I also wanted some variations of letters, so I looked at a book by Molly Suber Thorpe on Calligraphy too. She includes alphabets of capital letters with a ton of variety.

After I worked at a few variations for the lettering, I googled infinity heart tattoo, just to see what would come up. As a tattoo-less person, I did not know that the infinity heart was a thing. Lo and behold, there were quite a few variations of that as well. Some were just the motif itself. Some included lettering. Some were simple and some were ornate.

With all of this eye candy, I made a quick moodboard in Milanote.

While I don’t want to rip-off anyone’s work, I certainly don’t want to reinvent any wheels here either. So, after I took it all in, I came up with a few ways this infinity heart could come to life with the information I was given.

Each design includes all the information and the symbol. But, I also made each design to focus on a certain piece of the tattoo as “the star” of the design. In one design, the initials of the loved one are the focus. In another, the infinity heart symbol is the most embellished of the design. For the last iteration (not shown here), the lettering is the most fanciful. I think they’re pretty clear and have some room for variety too.

Now it’s up to the client to choose one of the three (or a combination of them) to put into a final design. Then, it will be enlarged and finalized.