Millie Nicholls is warning people to do their due diligence before getting a tattoo after a ‘lazy’ artist left her having to save up money for a painful removal procedure
A teen was caught in an epic holiday blunder after the trendy Gen Z tattoo she requested from her artist turned out to be anything but.
Millie Nicholls, from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, plumped for what’s been dubbed a generational refresh of the 90s tribal tattoo rage on the last day of a family holiday to Spain last month. The 19-year-old opted for an arm-length cybersigilism design featuring ancient sigil symbols, associated with imbued “powers”, and futuristic spiky line work during her trip to Andalusia. The teen was pleased with the initial prep work, including a sketch provided by the artist, but what she ended up with fell far short of her expectations.
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Millie, who had opted not to look at the tattooing process, which she said “really, really hurt”, turned back once the artist had finished, only to be greeted with a major blunder.
The finished tattoo included both the design she was shown and the hand included in the picture her artist had initially presented her with. The teenager asked him if he could rectify the “horrible” tattoo, and he attempted to shade in inking that had taken him less than an hour to complete.
Music lover Millie claims she will now have to fork out hundreds of pounds getting it blasted off, and has warned people to do their research before getting a tattoo abroad. Millie said: “The day before we messaged the guy on Instagram asking to book in for the next morning.
“He seemed professional on his Instagram. Before I got the tattoo he pulled up the design on his iPad to print the stencil out. When he was doing my fingers, it really, really hurt.”
“I was looking away and I was looking at my mum and she was holding my hand. There was ink all over my hand so I couldn’t really see when I did look. He stopped and washed it away and I looked and my mum asked me if I asked for that [the line around my hand]. I said ‘no I didn’t ask for that’, he’d just done that.
“It wasn’t done at that point but it would have looked really stupid if I didn’t let him finish it and then he tried shading it to make it look better but it just made it stand out more. He said he’d shade it for no extra charge. He did it and it just looked worse.”
Horrified Millie said she was “shocked” by the tattoo artist’s mistake and will now have to save-up to go through famously painful tattoo removal. Millie said: “He did the design pretty good. He could have gone a bit deeper in some places because it’s already fading.
“I found an artist in the UK to fix that. When I realised [his mistake] all I could think of was ‘I really hope it fades away’. It’s going to be on my body for the rest of my life and there’s no way that I could get a cover up to fix this.”
“I didn’t know what to say to him, I think I was just in shock until I got home. I have to walk around with this now and all my co-workers are always asking me why he did that and I don’t know, I really don’t know. Laser tattoo removal is expensive so I’m obviously going to have to save up for it.
“Tattoo removal hurts a lot more. I went through the pain of getting the tattoo done, I went through the pain of seeing how horrible it was and now I have to go through the pain of getting it removed.”
Millie now advises people not to get tattoos on their last days of holiday, adding anyone who wants body art should do their research beforehand. She said: “I’d say dig deeper than I did and do more research. Maybe speak to people that have got tattoos. Don’t go on your last day because they know they’ll never see you again if they mess up.
“If the tattoo is 50 euros or less than that’s a big red flag. For all of the stuff they use to do your tattoo it costs them about 50 euros so they wouldn’t be making any profit unless they’re using cheap stuff.”