The Elfnat Tattoo

by Ros Barber (Brighton)

This girl comes in and she’s got this child’s drawing of an elephant. Underneath is written ELFNAT, you know, a very small child’s drawing. The elephant was very basically done, the crayon went all over the lines and she says I want it exactly the same.

Everything that we do is very precise, and even though you’ve been given permission to do it, your hand just doesn’t want to go anywhere near it. Normally I’d ask more questions but it was so unusual, all I could think was ‘How am I going to do that?’

But we sat down and I did it, exactly the same, all messy, over the lines, with ELFNAT underneath and everything. It was the only photo I’ve ever taken of a tattoo where I’ve got the original next to it to show, basically, it’s meant to look like that!

So I said to her afterwards, ‘So is it your son’s or your daughter’s picture?’ And she said, ‘Oh no, my mate works at a nursery and I just saw it on the table and thought that would make a fantastic tattoo.’ I couldn’t believe it.

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What Ros Barber says about The Elfnat Tattoo:

Mick J has been making a living from his art for about 18 years now, almost as long as the Blue Dragon tattoo parlour on North Road has been open. He moved to Brighton from “sunny Walthamstow … with two ‘f’s” to work at the Blue Dragon 11 years ago, and has some great and funny stories. Here’s another quickie I couldn’t resist. “Some people have just not got a high pain threshold. This guy – his girlfriend’s name was Sadie, and he wanted it across his back. But he could only do it one letter at a time, and he’d done three, and then she left him!”