Yeah, hail Satan!

July 15, 2014 8:09 AM

The Pulp Zine explains how to do a stick and poke tattoo.

Pink Tapes does stick and poke tattoos of whimsical subjects such as pretzels, pizza, ghosts and treasure maps, and kitties.

Marissa Paternoster of the band Screaming Females talks about drunkenly giving DIY tattoos in comic form.

posted by Juliet Banana (29 comments total)

It should be noted, as someone who has gotten three tattoos in three months (in licensed tattoo shops), I do not recommend any of this.
posted by Juliet Banana at 8:09 AM on July 15, 2014 [8 favorites]

I gave myself a stick and poke tattoo. It was not difficult. It's an "X" (harDCore!!!), so pretty basic. I thought I would try something more substantial, and found that it was very difficult. Luckily I used the wrong kind of ink and it just got mildly infected and the ink dropped out.

In short: go nuts.
posted by OmieWise at 8:12 AM on July 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's an "X" (harDCore!!!)

Especially when it's tattooed on your forehead.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:14 AM on July 15, 2014

Peter, I have no idea why you would stereotype someone who, with no forethought or consideration, would sit in a room for several hours jabbing himself with a needle dipped into a substance not meant for inclusion in the human body as an idiot. It's not on my forehead.
posted by OmieWise at 8:18 AM on July 15, 2014 [14 favorites]

I did one when I was in highschool. It was easy and didn't hurt, and came out surprisingly well, but I'm also glad it mostly doesn't show. The sample art in the photos, crude as it is, is better than my teenage taste.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:19 AM on July 15, 2014

(I can't remember for sure, but I think I learned about the technique from some anthropological book about the Aleut.)
posted by Dip Flash at 8:20 AM on July 15, 2014

I learned how to do this in 7th grade health class when they were frantically trying to convince us not to do this thing we had never heard of because HIV or something.
posted by Think_Long at 8:23 AM on July 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Seriously, they showed us how to break the ink cartridge, tape and sterilize the needle with your burner friend's lighter, like it was ridiculously informative.
posted by Think_Long at 8:24 AM on July 15, 2014 [12 favorites]

All of my tattoos are of this sort, self-inflicted. I have a toaster on my ankle, a pair of vice grips on my calf, a tiny star on one shin, a Chaos star-of-arrows on the other (which is covering an upside-down horseshoe with a 13 in the center), and a series of circles on my sternum.
The toaster was the first one, and it's still discernible 21 years later.
posted by battleshipkropotkin at 8:27 AM on July 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

A friend of mine once had a perfect clusterfuck during an art project in which she gashed her thumb with an Xacto knife, then somehow got ink in it immediately afterward, which gave her a tattoo.

It was just a kind of mean, jagged blue line on her thumb, but it was the coolest tattoo ever. Much more evocative than some boring scar.
posted by ernielundquist at 8:33 AM on July 15, 2014 [5 favorites]

I have quite a lot of these as this was just kind of what you did as a punk rocker in the mid 90s in Portland. They are:

1. A heart with a lightning bolt through it because I'm a heart breaker

2. "BDW" for Bill Dee Williams. We had a Colt 45 sign in the punk house and one day we were drinking 40s in the morning and decided that Billy Dee was the coolest man alive. About five of us have this tattoo.

3. Outline of the state of Tennessee. My friend from TN did this tattoo but prefaced getting started with "Give me 20 minutes. I need to sober up a bit.".
posted by josher71 at 8:36 AM on July 15, 2014 [6 favorites]

My buddies did stick and poke when I was a youf, but I wasn't having it. Pointing to my friend's rather large X on his forearm (Omie - is that YOU??) and having him, through a mouthful of cigarette smoke say, "Yeah man! Straightedge!" made me dubious of my own level of longterm commitment.

Eventually we tried to build a tattoo machine out of an electric clipper, the body of a disposable Bic pen, and the high E string of a guitar. It SORT of worked, insomuch as it would inflict grievous wounds which you could dump India ink on and hope for the best. The first (and only) tattoo I ever gave to anyone was with that machine, doing a freehand, like, filigree on their foot. Brutal. I wonder if he still has it?
posted by dirtdirt at 8:36 AM on July 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

The comic is legit hilarious. Sometimes I miss my 20s, but then I also sometimes wonder how I survived.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:38 AM on July 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

I know what I'm doing this weekend.
posted by winterportage at 8:53 AM on July 15, 2014

Eventually we tried to build a tattoo machine out of an electric clipper, the body of a disposable Bic pen, and the high E string of a guitar.

Yeah, my "71" tattoo is from a machine exactly like that.
posted by josher71 at 8:53 AM on July 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Also: Despite her failed tattooing career, Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females is probably the best guitarist I have ever fucking seen in my life.

/tangent
posted by knownassociate at 9:05 AM on July 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

OMG! This is so relevant to my interests, and not just because Ben Snakepit has a Boston Terrier named Peeber. I can't check out Tumblr links at work, but that Talkhouse comic is fucking hilarious and perfect. Marissa Paternoster is the coolest. (Here is another comic she drew that might make you cry.)

My first stick and poke was done at the ripe old age of 11 -- the K Records logo, just like Kurt! The second was a large X on my lower abdomen, not X like "marks the spot" but X like "not just no, but double no, double hell no," as a permanent reminder that the intended biological purpose of the organ beneath the ink will remain forever unfulfilled. That one was done when I was 14, with India ink borrowed from the art department closet, and it still gives me a chuckle every time I see it; I feel just as strongly about its inspiration as I did decades ago: Double hell no babies here.

I also have a trio of inverted cross tattoos, and all of them were done... in licensed tattoo parlors, well after I became a legal adult! The history of the symbol is definitely pretty damn hardcore, just not in the way people tend to think it is.
posted by divined by radio at 9:10 AM on July 15, 2014 [6 favorites]

A friend of mine once had a perfect clusterfuck during an art project in which she gashed her thumb with an Xacto knife, then somehow got ink in it immediately afterward, which gave her a tattoo.

i have an accidental tattoo from an encounter with a hot wood stove (stove was covered in charred sawdust). it's my only tattoo...

now i want a tumblr of completely accidental (no drinking involved) tattoos...
posted by ennui.bz at 9:30 AM on July 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Filed under Things That Might Be Useful Should I Find Myself In Prison.
posted by tommasz at 9:33 AM on July 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Way back in the early 1990s I dipped a needle into India ink and poked myself once, just a little over my left ankle, giving myself a single pixel tattoo. About a year later, seeing that: no, it really was not going to go away, I covered it up by doing a small quarter-note. About two years after that I had a professional tattooist put several other musical notes all the way around to keep it company. I still think of that first dot as my first tattoo.
posted by Cookiebastard at 9:34 AM on July 15, 2014

t think_long: That's exactly like how DARE taught you how to roll joints and make apple pipes.
posted by Ferreous at 9:57 AM on July 15, 2014

I also have a single-pixel stick and poke tattoo from my teens: it's on my palm because I am a true Michigander and it sounded like a good idea when I was wasted. In spite of the materials and the placement, it's still there and I don't regret it a bit. As far as teenage idiocy goes it's really not so bad. My husband got a star tattooed in the same spot, but from an actual tattoo artist at an actual tattoo parlor: he's had it redone once or twice but it always fades to almost nothing after a year or so.

When we were first dating, nearly a decade ago, we started a short-lived bicycle gang (this mostly involved riding around drunk with stupid punk kids), and this crusty kid showed up for a ride one night just COVERED in the worst stick and poke tattoos I've ever seen. Every time I see one now, I think about that guy and wonder whether he's still around, and if he's had his scribbly aqua teen hunger force tattoos covered up yet.
posted by libraritarian at 10:03 AM on July 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

Eventually we tried to build a tattoo machine out of an electric clipper, the body of a disposable Bic pen, and the high E string of a guitar.

And me and Molly Hoey drank
Pruno and Koolaid she had a
Tattoo gun made out of a cassette
Motor and a guitar string and
she soaked a hanky in 3 roses
and rubbed it on the spot
and she drew a rickety heart and
a bent arrow and it hurt like hell
posted by usonian at 10:29 AM on July 15, 2014

One of my roommates has multiple scars from homemade brands he and his friends have applied. I asked why he didn't just get a tattoo, apparently in his group of skaters, tattoos are seen as a waste of money, when you can just give yourself scars for free. I will just say that I'm glad he at least doesn't do these.

I will mention that he is 34 and that his last branding was a year ago. He's not an idiot, but I do wonder about how he treats his body sometimes.
posted by Hactar at 1:40 PM on July 15, 2014

Just in the last week a "scratcher kit" manufacturer recalled their at-home kits, sold over Amazon and eBay. Always go to a licensed shop!
posted by Homeskillet Freshy Fresh at 2:10 PM on July 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

i think my favorite part of that comic is the cans of beer saying "high gravity" on them.

why, and how are malt liquor/shitty beer and stick and pokes so intertwined? they just inherently are.

the last time someone i knew got one when i was around, we were all drinking copious amounts of the shortlived 7-11 brand beer we had gotten something on the order of 60-80 cases of from grocery outlet("gross out", of course) because it was $2.99 a 12 pack. i have a photo of my friends breaking, dragging on the ground car somewhere, loaded with all of it. We built an enormous throne out of the unopened boxes and took turns sitting in it while drinking the swill.

But anyways, the stuff was only like 3.8% because it was the "light" since they sold out of the ice in hours, so we were drinking it like it was fucking water for weeks. Midway through a particularly lubricated afternoon, we walked over to a friends place and ended up in a bizarre room only accessible by a trap door drinking more of that shit from an overloaded backpack while everyone got stick and pokes.

I am just incapable of associating stick and pokes with anything but moments like that. The two are inexorably intertwined.

Way back in the early 1990s I dipped a needle into India ink and poked myself once, just a little over my left ankle, giving myself a single pixel tattoo.

My friend did this... on her face. While completely sober. After coming to the same realization, she just expanded it into a larger dot. Most people just think it's a mole/birthmark though and ignore it, but all of her friends know. Then again, she has like 20 other stick and pokes so...

Not sure where i was going with that, but i still think it's just a hilarious train of thought to have. "Hmm, i wonder what would happen if i did this. I know, why don't i try it on my face!".
posted by emptythought at 3:11 PM on July 15, 2014 [3 favorites]

I helped a few buddies do some safety pin tats back in the community living part of my life. The design? A safety pin! :) I didn't get one but I regret that now.

We followed pretty strict hygienic rules (per my insistence) and bought some ink from a tattoo artist friend.
posted by schyler523 at 3:35 PM on July 15, 2014

Love the comic! This just warms the cockles of my little punk heart.
posted by bobobox at 10:49 PM on July 15, 2014

These things are terrible but also strangely charming.
posted by The Monkey at 5:17 AM on July 16, 2014