There are a few things in this world that I absolutely adore: my family, animals, tattoos and photography. I am happy to say I get to spend my life doing what I love by making sure the abovementioned things are always part of it.
It didn’t take much to mix my love of tattoos with my lovely family – my mother got her first tattoo a few years ago for her birthday from my beloved tattoo artist Wayne, and has been talking about a spanning back piece ever since. My dad is the real convert. When I started getting major work done he was supportive but of the “not-in-my-lifetime” mentality and now he’s in the process of developing a half-sleeve for himself. My husband is currently petitioning to have us head back to Bangkok to Max Tattoos for a family tattoo holiday. If that’s not the best way to combine two things I love and make memories as a family, I don’t know what is.
Every day I mix my love of photography with my love of animals – I currently live in the Masai Mara, Kenya, and spend my days getting paid to take photos of the wildest, most incredible animals in the universe. It’s insane. I hope to eventually take it one step further like my good friend Sarah Skinner, and sell photos that will directly support causes close to my own heart.
It does me good to see other people who have managed to find ways to combine their life loves too. Brandon Bond – tattoo artist extraordinaire and fierce dog lover – has dedicated his life to saving hundreds of horribly mistreated and abused pitbulls and even started his own rescue organization, All or Nothing Pitbull Rescue, in Georgia. I’ve written quite a few posts about other tattoo artists and shops, like Bond and All or Nothing Tattoo, that have found ways to use tattooing as a platform to support organizations close to their hearts. Among them is Precision Ink in Sudbury, Ontario. The tattoo shop will be collecting donations of pet treats, bedding, litter, leashes and collars from now until Christmas Eve in support of local rescue organization Pet
Save. Ink will trade tattoo and piercing services for donations to encourage the local tattooed community to get involved.
I also recently discovered Rescue Ink (both photos), a tattooed 10-man animal welfare team that takes their plight to save the New York Tri-State area’s saddest animal souls seriously. The Telegraph published an amazing profile of the group that is so excellently written that I won’t paraphrase it here. Click here to read it for yourself.
The point of all of this is that there are amazing ways to blend the things you are passionate about so that you can live a happier, more fulfilled life while enabling someone or something else to do the same. If people like Bond can use tattooing to save the lives of pitbulls – if Rescue Ink can use a ragtag motorcycle gang to save feral, abused kittens – hell, if I can get my father to get a tattoo, then the life blending possibilities are truly limitless, no matter what you’re in to.