original art by T , heavy metal menders
more apprentice tattoos by me!
bearded unicorn lady. The Girl with the Unikitten Tattoo
Ivy Esposito wears her heart on her sleeve, one she's been working on over four sessions and about 15 hours since November. Each bit of plush greenery that decorates her left arm represents a member of her family: parents, siblings, cousins. And hidden among the foliage and flowers is something else, a tattoo for her nine-years-younger brother. Unlike everyone else, Esposito's brother is represented by a cat, or, more accurately, a furry gray kitten with green eyes that almost mews at you from its tucked-away spot on the inside of Esposito's left arm.
"He's not much of a flower kind of a guy, so he wanted a kitty cat instead," the MUSC medical lab tech explains.
As children, the siblings had lots of cats at their home in Ohio, but none of them were like the one on Esposito's arm, with its bird-like wings and a tiny nub of a horn sprouting from its forehead. Esposito calls it the kittycorn. However, Margo Hawkins, the Blu Gorilla artist who inked it, prefers the term "unikitten." The horn was all Hawkins' idea.