Awful Tattoos

I can't tell which is worse!

2009-12-08T16:45:00.002-05:00

I can't tell which tattoo is worse! Is it this unicorn with a broken/ jello neck?

... or these little scratchy buddies? They are both so bad!

CATBEAR?!

2009-11-13T11:30:00.003-05:00

aaaaarrrrghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!
It's a cat! With shark teeth! Or maybe it's a bear?

MUFFIN MAN

2009-11-13T11:25:00.003-05:00

If anyone has any idea what the story behind these tattoos is, I would LOVE to know!

My favorite thing in the entire world!

2009-11-12T11:42:00.005-05:00

Zombie Jesus!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks Ryan, your tattoo is truly amazing!

Click here for more amazing zombie jesus tattoos

Cowboygirl up!

2009-11-12T11:15:00.008-05:00

This gem was submitted by a reader. It's actually not that bad... technically it's good, and I get the funny "cowboy up" twist on phrasing. The floating hat is a little weird, but I've seen a million worse tattoos. It did get me into searching for some cowboy tattoos though, and look what I found!

Same artist or inspiration? I kind of like it...

However, there are some truly terrible cowboy tattoos out there, which I am happy to share with you.

I love his tiny feet! They're so dainty!

This poor cowboy only has one foot.

And this is from the anime series Cowboy Bebop, so it's a different kind of cowboy... but it's so terrible I had to share.

Eye know you got a bad tattoo

2009-10-20T17:41:00.004-04:00

This gem was sent to me by a reader. Thanks! I love the "painterly" style.

If anyone knows what's going on here, please let me know!

And this one... yeesh! It has everything! Spraypaint, tears, a rose, eyes... I wonder what the sad story behind it is.

Death Metal Tattoos: part 2

2009-05-28T11:27:00.003-04:00

I wish I knew what this was, I really do. It looks like a totem pole of demons? With some kind of weird scarred-out blob in the middle. Is it a tribal-mutant batman logo? AND DO YOU SEE THE SCRATCHED UP FETUS ON HIS ELBOW? I mean really, how could you miss that? I don't even know what the stuff on his forearm is. If anyone can help decipher this, please let me know! I was staring at this guy for ages trying to figure it out.

I wish I knew what was on his back, too. You can see a bit of it poking out. I bet it's incredible.

Death Metal Tattoos: part 1

2009-05-27T15:39:00.002-04:00

I went to the Maryland Deathfest this past weekend and OH BOY did I see so many amazing metal tattoos! One million distorted zombies! Ten thousand blurry black and white messes of somethingorother! A good handful of band logos! I have a LOT to share with you guys, but let me start with this gem (perhaps the best of the bunch):

THAT GIRL IS TRUE. EVIL. I love the fancy flourishes added to each word, it really rubs in the brutality of her tattoo.

Tune in soon for more!

It's a dog going through a divorce

2009-05-06T15:04:00.003-04:00

This is another tattoo in my favorite category ever: friends convincing other friends to get ridiculous nonsensical tattoos. Hilarious and awesome. And awful.

This was the first tattoo for this poor/rad soul. Description from the friend whose idea and drawing it was is below.

"i dont really remember what led up to the idea of swift getting a 20 second drawing i did of 'a dog going through a divorce' as a tattoo, but it was certainly assisted by it being 3am and a fair amount of alcohol on his part.. he woke up that next day and said "you know what? fuck it. lets do it." so less than an hour later i was paying someone $60 to permanently put it on swifts arm. dudes got sad depressed moppy divorced hair, hes unshaven and mopey, and hes got a little suitcase and dufflebag. he just needs to crash on your couch for a week or two. you know what happens when you call a tattoo shop and tell them you "want to get a cartoon dog getting a divorce", they dont believe youre serious. like 3 places didnt believe us."

Now THIS is what a zombie should look like!

2009-05-05T15:11:00.005-04:00

I got a spur-of-the-moment zombie tattoo last week from Alex at Three Kings in Brooklyn. If you've seen my millions of bad zombie tattoo posts, you know that a good, gory zombie is hard to come by. And I got one!!!!

Because it was a TOTAL impulse tattoo (I just dropped by the shop to hang out and watch my friend Myles tattoo my friend Josh for a couple minutes and ended up getting tattooed myself!) I didn't know where the image was from. It was just something AWESOME that Alex had drawn up (he had a bunch of drawings for their Friday the 13th Zombie day that were too involved for the $40 zombie deal they had going). Turns out it is from this obscure comic that not one, but TWO of my friends knew about!

In other new tattoo news, I also got my other crow filled in. They're by Myles, also at Three Kings.

I'm so stoked on them! They look great.

I'll post some legitimately bad tattoos soon, I promise. I just wanted to share these awesome ones because I am so excited about them.

scary-guy-1.jpg

2009-04-30T14:47:00.001-04:00

I think the title says it all, really. This is a truly scary guy.

Straightedge Toast

2009-04-28T18:27:00.004-04:00

This guy maybe has my favorite bad tattoos of all time. Ever. Period.
Possibly because I have a real soft spot for straight edge tattoos and punk/hc tattoos, possibly because they are just hilarious.

Description from the horse's mouth below:

All my friends have toast tattoos, because when you're poor and dumpster for your food bread is always readily available - it's this thing that kinda unifies us at this point in our lives. The Earth Crisis theme came about when some silly hardline XVX kids were staying at this punk house and talking about how belittling a band with serious issues is a bad thing, and how EC was cool and really helped push ideas into hardcore, and then they started insulting the people who lived at that house by degrading them and saying they had bad views, even making someone get near the verge of crying because she ate sparingly fish.

I realized that the lyrics for the beginning of Firestorm worked really well with toast (the original lyrics for those who don't know are "Street by street/block by block/taking it all back", referring to cleansing a neighborhood of drug dealers.) I went and got the tattoo done in an hour, showed them, and started drinking and eating cheese for the rest of the night (even though I was vegan at the time.) They stopped talking to me, and left shortly after.

I'm going to be getting a tattoo really soon that is based off of the anarchist atheist saying "No Gods, No Masters", but its gonna say "Dogs, No Masters" and have a kennel on fire and someone holding a leash with his brains blown out, and upside down crosses made of milk bones. I didn't think up that saying, though

More amazing back pieces

2009-04-15T10:41:00.004-04:00

What happened to this angel's feet? Don't they look just like stumps? Also why is one angel stomping the other one's head? I think I see some horns on the bottom angel there, so maybe it's Lucifer being shown what's up.
Let me show you a wonderful trio of ridiculous back tattoos:

Now I know that this photo was taken mid-scabby-stage so I won't be *too* harsh about the quality of the tattooing here, because it's really hard to tell. HOWEVER, it's impossible to tell what's going on! I do see some flaming dice, and a '3', but what are the weird globby things on each shoulder? They look like rotting lettuce.

Okay, now this one just confuses me. I am under the assumption that it's not finished. The triangle thing on the left is one of the worst tattoos I've seen, but seems like a pretty explainable bad tattoo to get. The Japanese guy on the right is not actually that bad, and obviously isn't done yet. What REALLY baffles me though, is what is on the bottom. It looks like a scratched on sunbathing girl at the beach! IT CAN'T BE SO! sdlkfjslfjs! Amazing.

More stick-n-poke radness

2009-03-27T18:47:00.005-04:00

Do you remember the post I did about the young man with the butterflies on his feet and the ridiculous home tattoos? Well, he showed me some photos of his friend's tattoos. And boy, are they ridiculous!

First up- booyah! arm!

This poor person has "booyah!" on their arm not once, but at least SEVEN TIMES! I can also see a pterodactyl, a ghost, and "USA GOES UNDEFEATED".

I wish I knew the story behind this one. "Saves Latin"??? ... maybe I don't really want to know.

And this. What is this? An alien-insect with patriotic wings riding a scooter with hello kitty with a mustache in the back? WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?

Seriously, the more I see tattoos like this, the more I shake my head and start to wonder if they are really works of genius instead of being the worst tattoos in the world.

Cats with no ears

2009-03-24T17:50:00.006-04:00

I just took in two of the cutest cats ever, and so I have had cats on the brain lately. Because of this, I thought I'd do some searching for bad cat tattoos. I am SURE there are worse ones out here, but this is what I found- three cat tattoos without any ears. Why would you ever draw a cat without ears? It just makes them look like weird aliens!

This looks like a Lisa Frank drawing without the pizazz.

This is the most half-assed tattoo I have possibly ever seen. Why are the eyes sideways? Why are the whiskers blue? Where are the ears? So many unanswered questions!

This is a mix of the lady's five cats and some human (the right eye). Why the human has a lazy eye, I don't know. I also think the cat is actually the bark of a tree.

And finally, while not technically terrible, this butterfly-cat holding a flower and inexplicably wearing pants makes me laugh.

Bad chest tattoos

2009-03-18T12:35:00.005-04:00

I think there is a trend of getting bad chest tattoos with bloody writing. Please tell me this isn't so, and it's just these three unfortunate dudes.

"All Hope Is Gone" -- not a very good thing to get when you're young (I cropped his face out of the photo, he looks like he is 17). Also what's the logo on the right? I assume these are bad lyrics of some sort.

"Blood Is Forever" -- I guess this is a way of celebrating family, but there is surely a much better way to do it. Also the bloody cracked Batman logo is an a+ addition there, buddy.

"Pull The Trigger Bitch" -- sdkjfhsdk I can seriously not think of a worse thing to get tattooed on your chest for all time. Do you think he will ever have sex with anyone ever again? I guess he'll just have to keep his shirt on indefinitely!

A PSA against home tattooing

2009-03-16T11:24:00.004-04:00

I've posted some awesomely ridiculously terrible and rad stick-n-poke tattoos here in the past, and I will again. I have a soft spot for bad tattoos that friends do to each other. This one, however, is pretty inexcusable, and shows how home tattooing is generally a really really really really bad idea.

ow ow ow ow ow ow ow. This makes me hurt all over just looking at it. So scratchy!!!! I can't even imagine what it must look like healed. I think my favorite part is that he only has one eyeball.

More Zombies

2009-03-16T11:09:00.005-04:00

Please excuse me for posting about my own tattoos so much this week, but I can't help myself! I'll post some legitimately terrible tattoos soon, don't worry!

You guys should all know by now that I am fascinated by flash tattoos and tattoos that come from the same drawing but look different. The tattoo I got on Friday was part of a Friday the 13th special, where you could get any flash zombie on a sheet for $40. I chose the classic coming-out-of-the-grave-zombie, and it turns out three of my friends went for the same thing. One of my friends and I got sxe zombies, my other two friends got the zombie as he was on the sheet. Here are all four zombies for comparison (done by three different artists, see if you can spot the two that were done by the same person).

crows

2009-03-13T16:06:00.002-04:00

I just got my thighs done. These are beyond awesome. Only the linework is done so far, but I'll get them finished next month. Done by the ever-awesome Myles Karr at Saved in Brooklyn, NY.

the placement is great

sxe god free zombie

2009-03-13T15:39:00.006-04:00

So I finally did it. I finally got brainwashed by my bad tattoo blog and got a bad tattoo. AND I LOVE IT!

He is a straight edge god free zombie, in honor of Friday the 13th. I love him because he's just like all the rad old metal zombies that I looooooove and simultaneously make fun of on here. Done by Alex at Three Kings in Brooklyn, NY (who is an amazing tattoo artist, please do not for one second think that I am saying his work is bad!).

Hugs

2009-03-05T13:50:00.002-05:00

... I really have no words. This guy got a disembodied arm tattooed on him. Amazing.

More amazing wizards (dragon edition)

2009-02-24T14:26:00.005-05:00

I'm seriously obsessed with wizard tattoos. Sorry if you guys are getting sick of them! Here are a bunch with their dragon buddies.

It looks like he's about to pitch all the magic onto his hand that's holding the orb, whereupon it will smash into one million pieces and doom the dragon to an eternity underground without his friends or family.

This dude is NOT HAPPY about the dragon's fiery flames. Not one bit.

Since when are wizards 100x bigger than dragons? I like the lightning bolts though.

"Alright, I want a dungeon. A deep, dark, scary dungeon, with a DRAGON and a huge SPIDER, and a lizard, and cobwebs, and an EVIL PLOTTING WIZARD with another dragon on his shoulder, and a CUTE BLUEBIRD and a HEART with a banner with my girlfriend's name on it and a bunch of FLAMES on the other side and some smoke all around everything. Okay?"

My Friend Zak (when bad tattoos come full circle and become awesome, part II)

2009-02-11T15:09:00.006-05:00

My friend Zak is quite possibly the coolest dude ever. He has great taste in music. He's super nice and friendly. He has a black belt in karate. He likes space and d&d and being awesome. And he is willing to share his ridiculous stick-n-poke tattoos with us.

In the same vein as this dude, Zak and his friends like to get tipsy and tattoo each other. And ridiculousness ensues.

I'm going to post his tattoos in installments, because they are just that amazing, so here is the first, of many.

Here's the story behind it, if I'm remembering correctly... he decided to get a wolf tattoo, because wolves are RAD (p.s. I have a bunch of amazing tribal wolf tattoos to share with you guys). However, no one could tattoo a wolf, so he just went with the word "WOLF!". Then, apparently, there's a Chinese saying "horse, horse, tiger, bear" which brings good luck, I think? So he went with writing those next to "WOLF!" to round out the tattoo. But the words kept getting progressively crappier as he went on, so you can barely read the last one.

This might be one of the worst tattoos I have ever seen, but it is also one of the best.

If you have a silly stick-n-poke tattoo, or have a friend who does, by all means EMAIL ME!

Wizards with triangle things on their hats

2009-02-07T17:00:00.005-05:00

You guys probably know by now how much I love bad tattoos that are all from the same book/ piece of flash/ google search. I especially feel this way about wizard tattoos. I collect photos of wizard tattoos and then try to match them up. It's amazing how many are alike! This is the largest collection of matching wizards I have so far. Enjoy.

This one has a sketch next to it, but it can't be the original.

I love how they are all the same, but have their own little personalities...

... like "mild" written over the nipple, for example.

And finally one in color! I can't decide if the color makes this bad tattoo more or less awesome. There's something about the classic black and white wizard that I really love, but I think anything magical really deserves to be in color.

I'm sure there are many more wizards-with-triangle-things-on-their-hats out there, I just have to find them. If you know of anyone with one of these, or know where they might come from, please let me know!

Bikes (part 2)

2009-02-06T15:55:00.002-05:00

whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy???????????????

There are so many better things you could put on your chest! Symmetrical, flattering, awesome things! Why why why why why why would you put a line drawing of a BIKE on your BOOBS? It makes her left boob look 10x bigger and droopier than the right because the left wheel is so much bigger.

sdjkskjfhsdfjs

At least it's well done. And I hope it's just the first outline and that she went and got it colored in later. And maybe put some stuff behind it to even the whole thing out.

p.s. my friend has a blog about funny emails he gets at work, if you're bored you should check it out.

The Crow

2009-02-06T12:41:00.009-05:00

I haven't gotten a tattoo in a year, and have been feeling the itch. I have an appointment for this upcoming Wednesday. I decided to get two big crows with lightning bolts, they'll probably on my ribs, unless I wuss out. It's kind of a memorial tattoo for my dad, but not totally. Anyway, I'll post pictures and you guys can feel free to make fun of them as much as you want. In anticipation of my appointment, I decided to do some looking around for terrible crow tattoos. I found a lot.

Full disclosure: I was really into The Crow when I was a teenager. Here's a photo of me being totally awesome when I was 13 or 14.

I don't have any ridiculous makeup on in that photo, but I definitely went to school made-up like the crow. The movie was filmed in my hometown (Wilmington, NC) and I went on a pilgrimage to see where Brandon Lee died. I listened to the soundtrack to the movie every day. I still really enjoy the movie. Regardless of my history with the movie, my crow tattoo idea has nothing to do with the movie The Crow. These people's tattoos do. There are so many sweet crow images out there, I don't know why they picked these out....

So here you go. Awful crow tattoos!

I think this crow is supposed to be on fire? It just looks blobby to me.

This is supposed to be the Crow logo, but it's not executed well...

This one too. Plus! Bonus barbed wire armband! I love seeing terrible versions of the same thing. (See my zombie jesus and wizard posts for more)

Crow mask + tribal + cross = goldmine!

Scarred Kanji + flaming crow = bigger goldmine!

I don't understand the spacing and sizing on this. It looks like the tattoos just got slapped on completely randomly. Also the little spritzes of red and yellow are a real nice touch. What is the black blob on the left? Can anyone tell?

skldfskdjf Brandon Lee does not look like that!

And he really, really does not look like this!!!

I hope you enjoyed this confessional edition of awful tattoos. Check back next week to make fun of my crow tattoo!

Geek Tattoos

2009-02-02T14:30:00.003-05:00

Just popping in to give you guys some links:

wired.com did a cool slideshow of geek tattoos. I submitted my d20 tattoo, so feel free to vote for it (or not) in the user submitted section. There are some pretty great tattoos by readers there, you should definitely check it out.

There is also a flickr group for geek tattoos. Again, some rad (and weird and bad) stuff in there.

Again feel free to email me if you have anything you want to share.

Adult Baby Jesus

2009-01-26T11:16:00.003-05:00

Laura sent me this ridiculous and awesome Jesus tattoo. As you guys might know, I am kind of obsessed with Zombie Jesus tattoos. This one isn't Zombie Jesus, it's Adult Baby Jesus. I looked around for similar tattoos and could find NOTHING. This tattoo is in a category of it's own!

your early morning crap: presidental tattoo

2009-01-20T13:14:00.004-05:00

It's a little late to be early morning crap, but I wanted to stick with a theme. Here's a tattoo to commemorate this historic date. A god awful tattoo of our 40th president, Ronald Reagan.

If you have an awful tattoo, feel free to contact alice@vivalavinyl.org and she'll try to get to it.

your early morning crap: frat dolphin

2009-01-19T09:07:00.006-05:00

This dolphin is member of a fraternity and obviously is into some major kush here. Wicked tribal, brah. He spends his day in his shitty recliner likely watching Old School with his other dolphin brahs. They all have tribal tattoos and love beer bongs.

This falls under the "it's so ridiculous it's awesome" category. Let's just call the AKH part awful, but the dolphin kinda awesome. I give you, your early morning crap...

If you have an awful tattoo, feel free to contact alice@vivalavinyl.org and she'll try to get to it.

your early morning crap: lion!

2009-01-16T09:08:00.002-05:00

Roar... this sucks!

If you have an awful tattoo, feel free to contact alice@vivalavinyl.org and she'll try to get to it.

Bad straightedge tattoos volume one: text

2009-01-15T11:27:00.005-05:00

I have a confession to make. I secretly love bad straightedge tattoos (maybe because I am straightedge? probably because they are just goofy). I actually secretly love all bad tattoos, that's why I do this blog. But I have a special soft spot in my heart for three x's that are stick-and-poked into someone's ankle. Many people get them, many people regret them later, but they are still awesome. These abominations, however, are not so awesome. Behold: the bad straightedge tattoos, volume one.

Bad font, bad linework, bad coloring, bad placement, just a generally bad idea.

Ditto! Only worse.

Why did he decide to put the text in a pool of water? I don't understand!

And finally- starship troopers straight edge dude. I have to admit this is actually pretty awesome, because I too love science fiction and not drinking. I hope this guy had a sense of humor about what he was doing, because that instantly turns this questionable tattoo into a hilarious and rad one.

If you have any regrettable edge tattoos (or any other kind of regrettable tattoo, for that matter) feel free to email me: alice@vivalavinyl.org.

your early morning crap: wizard!

2009-01-15T09:21:00.006-05:00

I know how much Alice just loves wizard tattoos. Here's one to get your day going.

If you have an awful tattoo, feel free to contact alice@vivalavinyl.org and she'll try to get to it.

It is never good... the "taz tattoo"

2009-01-14T11:21:00.013-05:00

If there is ever a terrible god damn tattoo that people get, it's that piece of garbage "Taz" tattoo. For some reason or another the Warner Bros. Tasmanian devil has become one of the more well known shitstorms of ink pounded into the skin of the willing. I am unsure if it's some need to feel as if the person getting the tattoo is "wild and crazy" or some true love for the actual character. Nonetheless it is almost always an awful tattoo and unfortunately tends to be a "first" choice for a lot of people. All my searching on the internet found so many people saying that their Taz tattoo was their first and how much they loved it. I think it falls under the cheap flash art that on a dare someone finally gets to impress others. Now we look further into the lexicon of tattoo art and discover together this craptastic series of tattoos.

I love how Taz takes on so many different roles and attitudes in these pictures. He is wild, crazy but hard working. Either way, they are all just awful.

who ya gonna call?

2009-01-13T16:37:00.004-05:00

Man oh man... I loved the movie too, but why?

sports and tattoos, a terrible mix...

2009-01-13T11:37:00.012-05:00

Now I am a die hard Yankees fan and will never deny my devotion to the team. I however have always had an apprehension to getting a team related tattoo not because I dislike the team in some way, but mostly because sports related tattoos are normally god awful. They are almost always poorly executed and have stupid subject matter if it's not a specific logo. Here are some real stinkers I've found on my search around our faithful internet.

Since I mentioned I am a Yankees fan, it's only fair to start with them. I've been to enough games in my day to see some really terrible Yankees related tattoos. This one is just bad all around. Terrible idea, terrible execution and just poorly done. I would hide this from my friends and neighbors who might be fans themselves. I would be ashamed that I disparaged something I liked so much with absolute shit results.

Now it wouldn't be fair to all those Yankees fans like myself to allow our beloved pinstripers to be defaced in such poor ink fashion. So it's time to retaliate against the Boston Red Sox by exposing what is just utter crap. They took the team logo, which is fine, but the, added matching sweet, sweet tribal. Tribal that is color matched to the logo, absolutely brilliant. What is the point of the tribal? To show how you can make something that much more awesome by putting lines around it? I will never understand the obsession with tribal.

Holy Christ, quite possibly the worst logo reproduction I have ever seen. What this person must have done was found the best blind tattoo artist in the New England region of the United States and just described what this logo looked like. Imagine being proud of this enough to take a photo of it to show to people on the internet.

Ok so another combo of total stupid. Let's take a dragon (a wonderful tattoo cliche) and give him a soccer ball. What the hell, who gives a shit what nonsense you put on your skin. The dragon itself is barely recognizable. I mean is the soccer ball in the dragon's mouth?

Tough guy here thought he would show that playing hockey on broken, melted ice was a way to express his devotion to the game. Is the the hockey man wearing a gas mask? I don't blame him, this friggin thing stinks.

You save the best for last. This is the best. A pink bunny playing basketball. See ya next time...

hi, i am jay and i have a terrible tattoo.

2009-01-13T11:00:00.000-05:00

Hi guys, I am Jay and I love terrible tattoos. Alice has me along for the ride to discuss the absolute awesomeness of total crap zapped into people's skin.

I have a really bad tattoo, it's of a "rune" on my leg. At the time I listened to a lot of black metal and swore I was going get a whole bunch of runes. One day an ex girlfriend of mine wanted to get her belly button pierced. While at the shop I wanted to get a cheap tattoo to show off how cool I was. Well I made the worst possible choice and I just have this dumb arrow on my leg that means "warrior" in rune speak. Anyway, one day I will cover it up with something less retarded.

I will do my best to find the worst possible tattoos to contribute to this very important blogging experiment.

When bad tattoos come full circle and become awesome

2009-01-13T10:41:00.001-05:00

I bring you the most amazing collection of terrible tattoos that you could ever imagine. This fine young gentleman has agreed to let me post his awful tattoos and stories for your reading pleasure. Behold, the best bad tattoos in the world. They are so bad they are now officially AWESOME. I will let him explain in his own words:

My friend came down from Toronto to visit for a week or two. My roommate Tyson came home one night with about 3 friends, 2 cases of beer, a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of vodka, a tattoo machine, needles and ink. We all start drinking and hanging out and having a really good time, then one of his friends suggests we get the gun out and start setting it up.

Not a single person before this had ever held a tattoo gun.

We get the thing running, set the needles in place, put on gloves etc etc and begin to tattoo each other. (different needles, gloves, etc for each person, not totally sanitary but not extremely dirty) after about hour 3 of tattooing the absolute most ridiculous shit on each other we end up falling asleep. Wake up the next morning and most people had no recollection of what had happened and will forever be reminded about the night they forgot they got tattooed.

Here are mine:

I think in the corner there we have a straightedge pyramid with an eye, like on the dollar bill?

The guy with the muscle arms at the top was supposed to be a CUPCAKE, by the way. There is also a cat with butterfly eyes and a mustache dreaming of... something?

But wait... there's more!!!

I had just gotten to a friends house kind of late at night, she was watching an episode of that Housewives of Orange County and i walked in on the part of the show where one of their daughters had told the parents she had gotten a tattoo. They started flipping out wanting to know WHAT and WHERE it was. She finally shows them this butterfly about the size of a dime on her foot.

So... i asked "i wonder how pissed they would've been if she wouldve came home with a bunch of random bugs all over her feet?".

Getting tattoos based on an awful reality tv show is possibly the worst idea in the world, especially if they are weird stickerbook bugs on your FEET, but this is just so funny and bad that I think it's pure genius.

This guy is my new hero.

These were bad enough to bring my posting back from the dead

2008-12-12T13:57:00.000-05:00

So as I'm sure you can tell, I haven't been posting here a lot lately. I've been busy at work, and haven't really come across many new tattoos that are worth mentioning. However, I got an email a few days ago that seriously shook me up. Check out these terrible tattoos, all by the same artist working out of a "pro" shop.

Was the kanji there already, and the rest of the tattoo worked around it? Or was it all designed in one piece? Why is the kanji overlapping with the star? What is that weird black V at the top? It's all a total mystery, and it's all TERRIBLE.

This just makes me think of a pile of pubes, I'm sorry.

...... I don't even know what to say about this. It's not as terrible as the others but it just seems so... sad.

Correction on the Dell tattoo

2008-08-06T14:58:00.001-04:00

Okay, so a while back I posted here about really bad logo tattoos. One in particular stood out, a Dell tattoo:

To me, Dell is a kind of lame, nothing-brand-- not one that I thought anybody would be stoked about enough to get it branded on them for life. So I made fun of the dude with the Dell tattoo. He emailed me today:

"i am emailing you. about your post about tattoos, 1 special one tho, the dell tattoo, see that tattoo is actually my tattoo, see my name is Todd Dell, in my life i always got the DUDE YOUR GETTING A DELL. and stuff like that i always laughed it off, so my friend was like dude you should get the LOGO tattoo on you i was like sure, thus knowing i could get away with it, no im not a nerd, i dont even own a dell computer, im actually a mma fighter lol."

So, I take it back. Sorry, Dell guy. You have a sense of humor about your name and you got a tattoo to prove it. You are officially awesome.

X Files Tattoos

2008-07-25T17:13:00.000-04:00

I am the biggest fan of the X-Files EVER and in anticipation of the movie I Want To Believe coming out tonight, I posted about X-Files tattoos on Fun Vampires (my permanent home for bad tattoo postings).

The worst of the worst (NSFW reader submission)

2008-04-29T13:10:00.000-04:00

This tattoo is so bad and so NSFW that I can’t show it above the jump.
Alex wrote to me, and said “the bet was high card draw best 2 out of 3 winner got to pick, but had to pay for the losers tattoo.”
Click to find out what the winner picked for him, but remember, it’s graphic.

Roll a d20 for awesome tattoos.

2008-04-22T14:23:00.000-04:00

I finally did a new tattoo post, but this one is AWESOME and not AWFUL!
Roll a d20 for awesome tattoos
This entry is dedicated to my new d20 tattoo, inspired in part by the quote from the X-Files episode Jose Chung's From Outer Space, "I didn't spend all those years playing dungeons and dragons and not learn a little something about courage!"

You can digg it here if you are so inclined.

I know I've been neglecting posts but I promise I'll get better.

xo
Alice

more updates at FV

2007-08-31T11:07:00.000-04:00

ZombieJesus vs. ZombieWizard

WTF is this?

Change of venue

2007-08-27T12:37:00.000-04:00

Hello loyal readers,

I have realized that I am no longer able to update to this blog every day, and so I have decided to move to another site which you can all check daily and get new updates, some of which will be mine.

funvampires.com

I just did a best-of-the-worst retrospective and will be making all Awful Tattoos updates to that site from here on out. I'll be posting on here to let you know when the updates are for the first few weeks or so.

Thanks,
Alice

Wizards III: wizards with balls

2007-08-20T15:15:00.000-04:00

Here is an assortment of my favorite tattoo theme: wizards with glowing and/or fiery crystal balls.

Glowing red eyes just make this wizard look like a snake, and what is up with the weird pointy shoulder on the left? I can't even begin to discuss the money ball...

This wizard is the best of the bunch, technique-wise, but what is up with the Q-ball? The sparkles are a good touch.

This guy gets bonus points for having eyes, but negative points for the half-assed glowing ball.

Not only does this wizard look like a zombie with shark teeth, but his magic ball is made out of DRAGONS and he has flying decapitated hands.

I love the robe but this wizard looks like he's about to hike a football, not cast some serious magic

And finally, I know this bad picture obscures the badness of the tattoo, but just pay close attention to the pointy red fingernails, the snake-eyes, and the fire that looks like it is in zero-g.

When you really, really love a musician...

2007-08-14T16:29:00.001-04:00

It still doesn't mean that getting their portrait tattooed on you is a good idea.

Star Wars II

2007-08-13T11:13:00.000-04:00

I got this email from a reader in my inbox this morning. Thank you so much! This chewie is amazing!
this is my friend's arm, proudly displaying chewbacca over an Irish
flag... this tattoo came to him in a dream.

It prompted me to do another search for bad Star Wars tattoos so that I could fill out a post. I already had this one saved. It's an internet classic and one of my favorite awful tattoos:

I found a couple other wonky chewies:

The color shading in this one is pretty funny:

And finally: one of the worst tattoos posted on this blog to date. It's Jabba with slave Leia, in case you can't tell! Her hair is coming out of her face, her six pack is atrocious, her arms and hands look just like her braid of hair, her nose looks alien, and she has the weirdest shoulder I have ever seen. Jabba actually looks pretty decent, but then there's the weird leafy neon background behind them.

Alien Invasion

2007-08-08T11:55:00.000-04:00

Alien tattoos are pretty much always a little cheesy, but these ones are next level:

And finally, an internet classic:

This is for the bike punx

2007-08-02T09:54:00.000-04:00

Just a reminder that A) sunscreen is your best friend when you get tattoos, and B) bike tattoos are not always super cool, especially not homemade ones.

p.s. thanks to the awesome readers who brought these photos to my attention!

WTF is this?

2007-07-31T15:40:00.000-04:00

Yet another edition of the game WTF is this?

Is that spooge on the eyebrow?

Suns II

2007-07-31T15:29:00.000-04:00

This tattoo is a distant cousin of the last tattoo on this post. It definitely joins the top-10 worst tattoos I've seen so far. I realize both are probably coverups, but when is a huge black, scarred blob better than a scratchy, faded, regrettable tattoo? I think never.

And this one is just generally bad. If it was a wizard at least it would get bonus points for cool idea, but a surly sun-dude is just kind of confusing.

Sorry!

2007-07-30T18:26:00.001-04:00

I'm super busy at work now, so this blog will suffer for the next few weeks. Please bear with me.

I haven't known where to post this, so I've been hanging on to it for a while. It seems appropriate for this post. Just sit down, relax, and please be patient.

P.S. feel free to email me bad tattoo pictures and save me some of the legwork!

***** EDIT
I got a few comments saying it's a good tattoo. Please note the label for this post is "good execution, bad idea". I will agree that pretty much any tattoo that is executed well isn't truly going to be an AWFUL tattoo, but you have to agree that getting a chair tattooed on you is a little over the top!!!

Text tattoos

2007-07-26T17:59:00.000-04:00

I am sure there are WAYYY more bad text/ script tattoos out there, but I didn't try to find any of these. They just dropped in my lap as I was searching for other things. One of these days I am going to specifically look for bad text tattoos and I am sure I will find a million of them.

UnfuckwithablE
the funniest part is the capital E at the end. And also the font, which is exactly what I would have chosen when I was 14 and still thought I was goth.

I think the word "SOUTHPAW" is flying out of the guy's skin, but why he would get this tattooed on him I don't know. It's a venue/club in NYC... does it mean anything else? The fact that it has flaps of skin tattooed around it is what puts it into this blog.

I have no idea what this means (the photo is named "iwillnotbedenied.jpg" so I assume that's what it is), but if they're going to have letters coming up out of the smoke, shouldn't they look like smoke and not block characters?

Goth meets Graffiti meets Detroit. I really don't know why I find this so funny.

sdkfhsdkfhsdkjfhsdkjfhsdkjfhsdkh!!!!! WHY?????

The best part about this (besides the worst bubble lettering ever) is that it is in quotes. He's not REALLY a bad boy.

Some more bad portraits

2007-07-25T17:16:00.000-04:00

When I first saw this tattoo, I thought the artist was going for a watercolor french impressionist painting style, but then I saw the terrible lettering under the tattoos and realized it's probably the work of a really bad artist.

This was pointed out to me by one of my readers. Thanks, Steph!

This is the worst Betty Page I have seen. The triangle boobs are a little disturbing, but no big deal. The mushface is terrible but I'd like to think that when the tattoo heals it will look better. What is inexcusable, however, is the arms and hands. Especially the right arm. She looks like a T-Rex on one side. Plus she has major camel toe in the armpit area.

And finally... this isn't so much incompetent as ridiculous. The moon baby is kinda cute, but the sun has the biggest nose in the universe and shark teeth. At least the script is done really well.

The worst tattoo I have ever seen

2007-07-25T16:44:00.000-04:00

Words cannot describe how terrible this is. What were they thinking?!

07/24/07 never forget

2007-07-25T11:07:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a very special day for me. My right sleeve is finished, after two years of working on it! My tattoo artist is Myles Karr, his website is gloriousdeep.com and he is amazing. We figured out that it has been about 50 hours of work overall. I love that it is so busy and crowded, it's like the awesome old fantasy/ biker tattoos I've been posting, but rad.

Anyway, here are some crappy cellphone pictures that I took this morning, and then some old pictures of the half sleeve. I'll try and get some better ones soon.

Here's one with my whole sleeve so you can get the general idea of how awesome the whole thing is together.

Close up of the protector demon

This is my favorite part of the tattoo-- where all the sections come together. The blue and yellow guy is flayed human skin turned into a cape.

Shiny closeup of the birds. The one you can see has intestines in it's mouth. The other one has a heart in it's mouth.

and old pictures of the top half of the sleeve (some with the dragon, some unfinished & without):
one
two
three
four

I really need to take pictures of the whole arm piece by piece so the whole thing is documented correctly, but I need a friend with an awesome camera to help out with that, so it might be a while!

Anyway, sorry for the break from awful tattoos, I will get right on to posting some terrible ones for you shortly.

xo
Alice

WTF is this

2007-07-24T17:58:00.000-04:00

This is a lucky horseshoe, a banner, and _______
swiss cheese? a sponge? I have no idea. What do you think?

I think this tattoo is of an spray paint can but I have no idea what else is going on.

Oh, The Horror!

2007-07-23T16:02:00.000-04:00

Horror tattoos, in one form or another...

First, the amazing back pieces:

And second, the bad guys.

The shine on this one makes it hard to see, but to me it looks like a big blob of cow manure with teeth and horns attached to it.

Look at the shading in the hat. It's sooo scratched and uneven. And the skin is supposed to look messed up, but not like there are a million triangles glued to his face.

Free For All Friday

2007-07-20T15:15:00.000-04:00

I found a bunch of amazing tattoos today but none that really fit into any good theme. I'm about to rush out of work and go to a wedding this weekend, and my brain is kind of frazzled from some intense video footage I've been working on, so I'm just going to post the pictures and let you guys decide where they fit yourselves.

Have an awesome weekend!

xo

More Zombie Jesus

2007-07-19T16:44:00.001-04:00

I found some more Zombie Jesuses (Jesii? Jesusi?) for you guys. It really wasn't very hard. I guess part of the whole allure of Jesus is that he's a zombie, right? Filling in the eyes really would help to make him look more alive and less like he wants to eat brains, though.

these Jesuses have eyes but they're really not any better.

Trippy Tree

2007-07-17T18:41:00.000-04:00

I'm announcing a new category: "WTF is this?" A couple of my past posts should have been in this category (skull bong, for example), but this one definitely fits.
The .jpg is named "trippy tree tattoo", and I can make out the tree trunk, but what are the other blobs around it? A weird smiley face with shark teeth? Sauron's eye? A head of some kind over on the left? What's the green thing sticking out on the right?
Any insight from you guys would be appreciated.

Amazing Back Pieces

2007-07-17T16:08:00.000-04:00

I have a confession to make. The more I do research for this blog, the more I am falling in love with terrible biker metal tattoos. I want a million of them. Every time I see a huge back piece with demons or dragons on it I get jealous.

I like to think that this guy started with the demon tramp stamp at the bottom and then worked his way up. My favorite part is the skeletons. They're super sweet.

This lady has pretty much every tattoo cliche imaginable, all in one spot! The squishy-headed crosseyed wizard is my favorite part. You can see he's trying to figure out how he got lumped in with all the other random tattoos and isn't too happy about it.

I should start a zombiejesus category. I am pretty sure I can find a bunch more where this one came from. He really wants brains. Braaaaains.

And, for the grand finale. Words cannot express my sorrow for this dude.

Angels

2007-07-16T17:11:00.001-04:00

I realize this is a sensitive post to make, as many people get angel tattoos as memorials, and so making fun of them is a pretty awful thing to do. However, I just can't help posting these.

This angel looks like she's melting and someone took sandpaper to the lines. And does it look like her legs are way too short, or is it just me?

This dude is fine until you get to the crotch area. Where is his junk and why is he grabbing at nothing?

Why is there shading outside the lines? Is that a boob hanging out or a tumor? Why is the foot so long? WHAT is going on with the right arm and hand holding her hair back? Why is the right hand so stumpy?

And then there's this one. I can't really understand what is going on. there's an angel on a podium hiding her head. There's some smiling something above her. There's some kind of sun and a bunch of lightningbolts. And some kind of weird floating head to the left. It looks like my high school doodles, frankly.

And finally, a couple horrendous NSFW angels with really, really bad faces:
one here
and one here

Celebrity Portraits

2007-07-11T15:18:00.001-04:00

Okay, so I have been joking for over a year now about getting two amazing portrait tattoos. One one thigh, I want David Duchovny as agent Mulder, with Gillian Anderson as agent Skully, and a bunch of UFO's and aliens and bigfoot and flukeman. On the other thigh, I want David Duchovny as the cross dressing agent on Twin Peaks, with Kyle MacLachlan as agent Cooper, with cherry pie and some logs and some coffee and maybe a dead crow or a percolator with a fish in it. The idea is hilarious to me and somehow I still find it hilarious over a year later (which is one test as to whether a tattoo is really worth getting or not). The thing is, I think David Duchovny would be a really hard guy to get a good portrait of (not to mention the fact that I probably would regret the whole thing later on down the line).

Anyway, here is some proof that celebrity portraits can be downright terrible.

Pinup Girls

2007-07-10T17:01:00.000-04:00

Here are some really bad pinup girls, for your viewing pleasure.
Please note that they are all A) badly drawn and/or B) badly executed.

Look at the proportions on this one! She has no neck!

This is obviously a photo of a fresh tattoo, so I'm sure it evened out and looked better once it healed. However, the shading still looks splotchy, the 'halo' around her is bizarre, the mouth is wonky, and the outlines look scratchy.

The linework on this poor girl is terrible, and the drawing is too.

Wizards II

2007-07-10T16:08:00.001-04:00

I actually like these wizards. It must be flash, or from some pretty well-known book, because I came across these today on two totally different tattoo shop sites.
If you have seen a wizard that looks like this or know where it might come from, let me know!

Suns

2007-07-10T16:03:00.000-04:00

Here are three really bad suns, ranging from really not so bad to possibly the worst tattoo I have seen in my life. The first two are really an excuse to be able to post the third one.

This one is kind of scratchy and weird looking but the colors are good:

This one has a skull in it, and the colors aren't so great, but it's still not that bad:

But this, my friends, this is really really really bad. It's scarred, patchy, blobby, and faded.

Randoms

2007-07-09T15:13:00.002-04:00

I try to have little themes for each post that I do, but these tattoos are just in little leagues of their own.

This is clearly some kind of drunken home-done tattoo, but is seriously bad. Shitty, even.

Apparently this guy broke his collar bone a bunch of times, so he got it tattooed. I can think of a million things to put there that would be way cooler than this.

And finally, this one isn't so bad. I wasn't even really going to post it, I just had it saved in a little folder of mediocre cliche-bad tattoos. However, I was on the subway this weekend, and saw the tattoo in person, so it has to be posted. I don't know the person at all, it was complete luck (or this is flash and a lot of people have this terrible tattoo, in which case it's worse than I thought).

Logos

2007-07-09T12:16:00.000-04:00

These tattoos are like getting someone's name tattooed on you, except worse. I don't get it. If you really love video games, get some awesome video game characters tattooed on you. If you really love cars, get an awesome vintage car tattoo. If you really love movies, get a tattoo from your favorite movie. If you really love a particular brand of computer... ok, I don't know what to say to you. Getting a tattoo of a Dell computer would be more lame than their logo.

I can't even comment on these individually. But seriously. DELL? BUICK? What are these people thinking?

False Metal / Real Metal

2007-07-06T14:12:00.000-04:00

I don't know if "false metal" is really a good category name for the following tattoos, but I couldn't think of anything better. These aren't the super awesomely terrible demon and monster tattoos that I posted earlier, they're the weird angsty tattoos that are both done badly and are bad ideas. It's a fine line.

Sad Goth Girl With Weird Stuff In Her Hair
(Really, what on earth was she thinking? Who is that hiding in the hair? And why?)

Demon Native American ?
I don't know what this is supposed to be, really, but the "smoke" is what gets me.

The Worst Dracula Ever
hahahahhahahh!!!!!!
Also the cross should be upside down

Demon Hand with Bonus Teeth
This reeks of numetal so I'm putting it in this category, but it is undeniably tough. Look at those gums!

And here are some real metal tattoos:

Rat Grim Reaper

Female Swordmaster Batwinged Demon Something
This rules. Hands down. I think I am going to have to do a top-10 awful metal tattoo countdown in the future, and this might just be on it.

Skeleton Dragons?
These guys are badass. And bad. Really, really bad. The heads are your usual badly-done, badly-healed metal tattoos, but the middle part? A jumble of something hellish. This is next level awful.

Do It

2007-07-06T11:19:00.001-04:00

This tattoo is bad in every way. I can't even write anything funny about it or pair it with other bad tattoos. It's in a league of it's own.

Fantasy Back Pieces

2007-07-05T16:29:00.001-04:00

This is perhaps the best post so far. I bring you a collection of amazing fantasy back pieces.

Here is a dragon, with what looks like a weird bloody/flaming tail tip, some huge balls, and strange blobs flying around him:

Okay, so this isn't strictly fantasy, but the winged horses make it fit into this category enough. There are also a bunch of angels, some weird tribal stuff, some praying hands, and a bad portrait way at the bottom. My favorite is the angel to the left with the ribs sticking out and the very awkward boobs.

Back to straight fantasy. This dude has some cool multicolored clouds, a skull moon, some kind of beast on a cliff, and I think there is a spiraling tower castle in there too, but I am not sure.

This guy has a moon and a cliff and a castle too. And a Pegasus and a dragon. What I don't understand is if you're going to get a straight-up fantasy piece, why go with an Asian dragon and not the Euro fantasy dragon?

And of course I saved the best for last. Again, there is a skull moon, and a cliff, and a castle (actually a couple), and some kind of horse (unicorn not Pegasus this time) but this guy has planets too! Planets in tattoo form are A++. He also has what looks like a wizard but he's cut off at the top of the photo and you can't see anything but a tip of beard. I wish we could see the whole thing.

Geeks and Nerds and Dorks, oh my!

2007-07-03T14:36:00.000-04:00

The sad thing about most of the tattoos in this blog is that they could be so awesome if the tattooer and tattooee (is that even a word?!) just had a little more sense. Or skill. Or both. Nerd tattoos definitely fit into this category. I am all about awesome tributes to dorky things and there are so many amazing nerdy tattoos out there (see the last entry of "good as in bad" tattoos for proof). However, it's very easy to miss the mark. And unfortunately the following people missed it by a mile.

This tattoo comes with an explanation (because seriously, there is no way anyone would get it, even if they do recognize fractals). It looks like blobs from outer space that are bleeding out into the skin.
"This is a piece of the Mandelbrot Set, the most recognizable (and first?) fractal. It uses the quadratic recurrence equation: Zn+1 = ((Zn)(Zn))+C"

Here are a couple people who decided that, instead of illustrating their nerdiness by getting an awesome tattoo of something they really love, they would just get the word. Because tattoos of words always look cooler than pictures, right? Wrong. Especially when they're done this badly.

And finally, here are a couple tattoos that aren't done badly, and aren't even horrible ideas, they're just placed and sized horribly. Both of them would be pretty cool if they were smaller and on an arm or a leg, but taking up that much prime space with something so simple and blocky just makes me cringe.

Also, it was pointed out to me that having LVL UP and a half-full EXP bar makes zero sense. The bar should be totally full or totally empty.

And finally, here's one that I found that I actually like. I think it's a cute combination of traditional tattoo design and nerdy content.

Bad as in Good

2007-07-03T13:40:00.000-04:00

After all this trash talking, I thought I'd give you guys a break and prove that tattoos can indeed be totally awesome and rad and amazing. Sometimes "bad" is slang for "good", so this category is "Bad as in Good" and is here to give your eyes a rest every once in a while.

Penguin looks like Penguin and not overly zombified. This is a hard line to walk, but they got it!

This tattoo blew my mind the first time I saw it. I want it. I am so jealous.

Alex Ross Superman. This is so amazing.

sdf,jhsdfkjhsdkfhskj this dude! It's so cool that I am speechless.

Kurt Halsey fan tattoos

2007-07-03T11:01:00.000-04:00

I think Kurt Halsey's drawings are unbearably twee and obnoxious, but I can see the appeal among the young and twee crowd. I knew there were people out there with tattoos based on his drawings but I had no idea there were so many! I figured most of them would be innocent little birds like the following (which is so cute it makes me want to puke, but I can understand it) :

But noooo. A ton of people went next level and got the little drawings with the little sayings about puppy love. How many of these people got matching tattoos at age 18 with their first boyfriend or girlfriend? A lot, I bet (I know for a fact a lot of the following are matching tattoos, but the first love thing is just conjecture). And that is kind of sad, because although I am by no means old or bitter, I am old enough and bitter enough to know that matching cutesy Kurt Halsey tattoos are a terrible, horrible, awful idea, and will almost surely be regretted a few years down the line.

The following are so gross and cutesy I can't even comment on them individually. The first one isn't even that well tattooed, but the rest are technically fine. It's just th idea that is so bad. Keep in mind that this is a small sampling of the inordinate amount of Kurt Halsey tattoos that are out there.

Guitar Heroes

2007-07-02T15:55:00.000-04:00

If I have to see another badly done flaming guitar tattoo in my google searches, I will shoot myself. I could have posted a billion of them, but I decided to give you guys the most creatively awful guitar tattoos instead.

Here is a skeleton playing guitar. I like the infected face, X's over the nipples, and dreadlocks.

This one isn't executed so badly. The idea could even have worked if the guy had decided on either tribal or "classic", but the font and the guitar and the tribal bits just don't work together at all.

Okay I really can't tell you why I am so annoyed about this Celtic knot guitar tattoo, but I am. Can someone back me up and agree that it's bad? It's not tattooed badly, and I guess the idea isn't even all that terrible either, it just bugs me for some reason.

Here is a NSFW guitar tattoo that almost falls into the so-terrible-and-metal-it-rules category:
click here to see the NSFW guitar

This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the blank space around the signature that just makes the whole thing look messy and unfinished.

And finally, here's another amazing back piece for you guys. It comes with an explanation from the owner (all misspellings theirs):
"Tatoo includes rainbow with seasons, angel with cheerleading megaphone, guitar with wings, hard to tell with picture but also has seashells, sandles, celtc cross, trumpet with halo, birthday cake with lit candles, snow flakes, fireworks, and thanksgiving scene plus other seasons!"

Zombies

2007-07-02T10:54:00.000-04:00

Good morning, readers!
This weekend I saw an amazingly terrible tattoo that I just have to tell you about. I didn't have a camera on me so I couldn't take a picture, but I wish I had. I couldn't decipher the whole thing, but it was a line of text running all the way across a woman's back, and it said:
(something) (something) BITCHEZ NIGGAZ (something) (something).
I wish I knew what the other four words were, but they were covered up by tank top straps and the tattoo was so badly done that the text wasn't clear at all.
Anyway, if anyone in NYC has seen this tattoo before, or has any insight into what it might say, please let me know!

This morning's theme is ZOMBIES. Zombies are awesome and I love them, but rotting flesh could possibly be one of the hardest things to tattoo.
This one goes out to Joshua.

I know zombies are supposed to look wonky and ugly, but this one just looks bad. Especially the hair.

Guy getting grabbed by a zombie, everything looking totally out of whack

At first glance this doesn't look so terrible, but then look at the eyes and how off they are.

Dawn Of The Dead tattoo. Ugh.

Then, there are the Night Of The Living Dead tattoos. I could post waaaay more bad ones (and a couple good ones), but here are a few variations on the same theme.

Junk Food

2007-06-29T13:18:00.001-04:00

The following tattoos are in a new category of bad tattoos: Good Execution, Bad Idea. These tattoos are all done well (some of them amazingly well), and they are such terrible, horrible, awful ideas that they come around full-circle and are possibly the coolest tattoos ever. Only the truly brave and awesome can pull off having a greasy junk food item tattooed on their body for the rest of their life.
This entry is dedicated to BCO. Pizza Forever!

Pizza! (sorry for the bad quality photo):

Pizza and Monkeys and Pot Bellies, oh my!

Flaming Burger:

Summer Vacation Burger:

Monster Burger (done by my favorite tattoo artist, Myles Karr):

And finally, related but not as awesome- McDonald's Boy:

Wizards

2007-06-29T12:29:00.000-04:00

Please let me state that I have a huge soft spot for wizard tattoos. They are pretty much always terrible (let me know if you have seen a good wizard tattoo), but charming, in a weird kind of way. I don't really know why I like bad wizard tattoos so much, because I certainly don't find bad fairy tattoos charming (or even good fairy tattoos). Anyway, here is a bevy of awesomely awful wizard tattoos:

Hairy Red-Eyed Floating Head Wizard:

Meek Purple Wizard:

Yin-Yang "POUNDER" Wizard (the bats are really cool though):

Death Wizard:

Space Wizard (I love love love this dude):

Blasty Wizard:

Wizard-That-Doesn't-Look-Like-A-Wizard 1 (the website I found it on clearly stated that it was a wizard):

Wizard-That-Doesn't-Look-Like-A-Wizard 2:

And, for the grand finale, Not Safe For Work Wizard (thanks Jen):
click here to see NSFWW

Bad Portraits

2007-06-29T10:25:00.001-04:00

One of the most unfortunate tattoos that you can have is a badly done portrait, and sadly there are a lot of them out there.
Here is the first of what I am sure will be many installments of Bad Portraits:

The details are what makes this tattoo truly awful. The tattoo of her chest tattoo. The hands (which aren't even in the photo). The cheekbones. The teeth.

This is my favorite bad portrait. It's shark-zombie-bride. I feel so sorry for the guy who got this. Again, note the teeth.

This poor guy has a zombie child on his arm. She doesn't have shark teeth- she seems to be suffering from the opposite problem: gummy mouth.

Okay, this one isn't executed so terribly (I'm sure when it healed it looked pretty decent) but it's creepy as hell!

From the same place that brought you creepy thumbs-up dude, we have creepy-cutter-angel (complete with tattoos-of-tattoos):

Star Wars

2007-06-28T15:24:00.000-04:00

I bring you three wonky Darth Vaders, one zombie Leia, and an amazing back piece:

Monsters

2007-06-28T12:30:00.000-04:00

Today's theme is monsters! I have some gems for you. I actually have a huge soft spot for terrible 80's metal looking tattoos. There's something about the wonkiness that makes them awesome, but only if they are of really brutal monsters. Or maybe wizards.

I think this is a vampire dark elf zombie monster, but I am not really sure. Also, what is spearing the left eye? A tail of something even more sinister?

I actually kind of love this one. I can't figure it out! I think it has three heads, a bunch of bulging muscles, some horns, some hands doing the claw (my favorite), and the weirdest lower body I have ever seen.

This is the best hellhound-in-a-graveyard EVER, but only because he has a really wicked goatee. I think it is from Big Dogz Ink. The skull looking woefully upwards is a great bonus.

Skull tattoos

2007-06-27T16:32:00.001-04:00

I love skull tattoos so very, very much. I have nine of them myself. But these ones? Not so much to love about them.

Is this a welder skull? He looks like he is melting!

Does this skull have a cigarette coming out of his head? And what is the big log behind him?

I couldn't figure the other two out, but I really can't figure this one out. What is this? Alien angel quarterback skull?

** update! Apparently Skull #2 is a skull bong. That pretty much makes it more awesome/awful all at once.

Fantasy Failures

2007-06-27T15:48:00.000-04:00

Fantasy gems from Big Dogz Ink:

Unicorn tattoos are awesome! Tribal tattoos are not. Wonky unicorns floating astride a tribal piece? Totally awful.

This wizard is almost awesome. He's grizzled and has a cool staff, but his hand is melting, his beard and his cloak meld into each other, and the whole tattoo looks scratched.

And from Headlight Tattoo (not all their stuff is terrible, so it's not as fun as Big Dogz, but there are some gems in the galleries if you search)

Okay, so the color choices in this fairy aren't that bad, but the proportions? The smooshed face? The hair? The floppy left hand? (the right hand claw is kinda sweet though.) The weird shading in the dress?