Most of my Life I felt like a bit of a black sheep. I had no family connections to match my Artistic tendencies until a few years ago, when I found out that my Great, Great Grandfather was an ornate pattern carver. Turns out his name was Edgar Peacock and he made richly ornate cornices for places such as the heritage listed Regent Theatre in Brisbane (check out glimpses of his work HERE and HERE).

To represent and honour my newfound family roots, I got a peacock tattooed on my inner arm of Edgar in 2010, but I never got him fully finished. The ornate carving behind his head was still just an outline, his eye was left undone and there were no background features.

Boo.

Fast forward a having a child and over four years later, I finally booked in to get my peacock finished for my Mother's Day pressie. Becoming a Mumma has definitely made me much stronger, because I sat in that chair for 5 hours quite happily, as I watched my tattoo slowly emerge.

Many people ask me if I design my tattoos. The truth is, I collaborate on the design content but I leave it to the Tattoo Artist to do their custom thing. This is Jamie Lee.

My big requests to Jamie were to fill in with the Sun, to remind me to Shine my Light and add some hot pink Cherry Blossoms, to remind me to Love Myself. She also added some shadows and colour to the existing peacock and finally, she gave her an eye.

YAY!

Here's a pic taken by Jamie, just after being finished ...

Now she looks beautiful, feminine and strong and she has found Love and Acceptance in Her Own Skin.

BUT ...

In saying that, for me getting a tattoo is like creating an intuitive painting. Adding colour and imagery in one area can bring forth a new direction and a call to move forward again. I would now love to extend her with some consecutive pink-orange dotting above the sun, like gleaning rays and more, soft cherry blossoms behind the tree branches. More shine, more Love. And maybe even a mandala and dream catcher further up my arm, for good measure.

A girl can dream.

But for now, I Love Her and that burning desire of feeling unfinished has shifted into a 'Wouldn't it be nice if...' feeling, and after four years of waiting last time, I can deal with that.

If you're in Brisbane and would like to get in touch with Jamie's tattooing, find her on facebook HERE. She's currently working from Heart and Soul Tattoo in Geebung.

All my Love,

Chrissy