Have you ever wanted a tattoo? But are afraid of changing your mind, or the pain? Well you might finally be in luck. A new development in Temporary Tattoos has hit the market and we have tried them.
Inkbox Tattoos are not like the ones you got as a kid in a bubble gum wrapper, that you slap on and it peeled away in the bath that night.
No these are said to stay on for up to 8 weeks. These take a while to even transfer, fifteen minutes in fact, 15 minutes sat with a transfer pad on your arm, leg, foot, face! wherever you are feeling your temporary butterfly, or wolf, Tribal design, emoji, knives, or whatever else you picked. This is the down side to the process, the transfer cannot move, not a millimetre in all that time, or it will blur and smudge, then you’ll look like you got a Tat in Fuengirola that night you got too wasted to remember anything.
Then when you peel it off, well there is nothing there, you wipe away the excess ink and the whole image fades, like it didn’t take, but that’s the magic of these new inks, give it time, a day or so and the image starts to grow out of your skin. After a few days it’s there, solid and permanent, well semi!
The Freehand Ink comes in a little tear shaped pot, a small .1mm nib like a Fineliner pen, allows you to draw what you like with fine detail. It’s recommended that you trace an image but if you are feeling the swirl, Jackson Pollock effect then go for it. It’s a little odd to control at first, similar to Henna in that you need to continuously squeeze the rubber pot as you draw over the skin to make the ink flow.
So what did we think?
With most of the transfers ranging between £16-40 the one I picked is £25 with that in mind, I had high hopes for this. When first opening the package it doesn’t really come with any instructions, instead it tells you to go on their facebook page and look at the walk though. I don’t personally have a facebook, so I had to rely on the small instructions that did come in the packet. I peeled of the layer, stuck it on my arm, Maybe the positioning didn’t turn out exactly as I wanted it however once it’s stuck, it tells you not to move it. I did the alcohol wipe, then put the towel in the microwave. A couple of seconds later, you have to put the warm towel on the transfer pad. Here is the tricky part. You must not let the towel move if you do you risk smudging! Well needless to say I tried not to move it, but being that you have to hold it in the same place for 15 mins, It did slip, I did end up with a smudge border at the bottom of the tattoo and the triangular section at the bottom began to spread almost immediately.
After all that is done you take the pad off and wait for a little while I think it was about an hour and then wash your tattooed section off. At first the tattoo was just a faint outline, but 48 hours later it started to darken. I was intrigued, however after only a couple of weeks its begun to fade again back to a really pale version of itself. For 25 pounds I would have expected much more and really am not that impressed.
The 1oz freehand bottle is the largest you can buy is waaaaaaaayyyyy smaller than you think it is going to be is £30. It barely has enough ink to complete two designs.
Our biggest problem was getting the images we chose to transfer to the skin, via tattooing transfer paper, so a vast amount of tries later we finally ended up with a couple of random images inked into our skin. Ash fully freehanded a tribal/samoan style design on bob’s neck and Bob drew a pair of Magpies on Ash’s arm. Then you have to sat dead still with thick ink on your skin, this can be awkward if it’s on skin that instinctively moves, like your neck, but we survived.
The designs faded as the transfer did and looked rubbed out for the day, but after a day the designs came back in and grew, the problem we found were from the initial laying on the ink to the final image, it’s hard to see exactly where the ink is taking, or touching the skin in places. After not too long Bob’s neck was just a faded grey series of lines and not so much a design and Ash’s was….
So in conclusion, the idea is there, it’s good in theory, it’s just the tattoos aren’t that strong, the transfer has already faded and smudged, after only 10 days. The freehand ink is difficult to apply, I guess you’d get better at it over time, you’d end up paying about as much for a sleeve if you bought enough ink to practice to a level of expert, but if you practice it could be a good thing to do at parties or events, As Karlie Kloss had at her birthday last month. The Ink and the transfers are needlessly expensive and to be quite honest don’t even look as good as Henna. So for us that is what we will be sticking to!
There are other brands out there similar to Inkbox such as Momentary Ink , Ink Wear which even have colour! So maybe we will be trying them out soon.
Have you tried them? What do you think? Do let us know and check out our Pinterest boards for inspiration and to see what we like is style and tattoos.
Climbing Moss 