A British teen suffered an epic tattoo blunder when the Spanish artist she visited on holiday failed to understand her trendy Gen Z design.
Millie Nicholls was set to be inked with what’s been dubbed Gen Z’s answer to 90s tribal tattoos on the last day of a family holiday to Spain last month.
The 19-year-old from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, opted for an arm-length cybersigilism design featuring ancient sigil symbols, believed to have ‘powers’, and futuristic spiky line work during her trip to Andalusia.
Happy with the sketch the tattoo artist provided on his iPad, she settled in for a wince-inducing inking session, opting to look away as he got to work.
But her holiday joy soon turned to horror when she looked down at her right arm and spotted the huge mistake.
Instead of what she wanted, she claimed the ‘lazy’ artist copied the sketch in its entirety, tattooing the design as well as the hand and arm outline onto her.
Stunned, Ms Nicholls asked if he could rectify the ‘horrible’ tattoo leading to him attempting to shade the inking that had taken less than an hour to do.
The teen, who will now have to fork out hundreds of pounds getting it blasted off, is warning people to do their research before getting a tattoo abroad.
A British teen suffered an epic tattoo blunder when the Spanish artist she visited on holiday failed to understand her trendy Gen Z design
Instead of just the tribal-inspired tattoo, the ‘lazy’ artist copied the sketch in its entirety tattooing the design as well as the hand and arm outline onto her
The teen opted for an arm-length cybersigilism design featuring ancient sigil symbols, believed to have ‘powers’, and futuristic spiky line work- never imagining that the hand print would also be inked into her skin
She 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.’
Ms Nicholls said she was looking away when the tattoo artist was working because of the pain and didn’t initially see the outline because there was so much ink everywhere
Horrified Millie says she was ‘shocked’ by the tattoo artist’s mistake and will now have to save-up to ‘go through the pain’ of laser 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.’
Horrified Millie says she was ‘shocked’ by the tattoo artist’s mistake and will now have to save-up to ‘go through the pain’ of laser tattoo removal
Ms Nicholls said her sister has now been blocked by the tattoo artist on social media and she is warning other people to do their research before going to get a tattoo abroad.
The disgruntled teen said: ‘When we messaged him it was on my sister’s Instagram and she can’t find the messages anymore.
‘I reckon he’s blocked us and I can’t remember the name of the studio. I think he’s probably seen the TikTok and blocked us.
‘I made another video and I blocked his face out of it because I didn’t want to be that kind of person but I think he blocked us.
‘I think because we told him that it was our last day there, he didn’t really care about doing our tattoos that much.
‘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.
‘I’ve got two tattoos. I got my other one done in Spain as well except this one was really good, so it’s not all artists in Spain it’s just the lazy ones who don’t care.’