Stick and Poke is Not a Sin

Source of judgement-free help for those looking to give themselves a "stick and poke" tattoo.  Feel free to message me/ask/submit your work to my page. [I am 18+ and I am training as an apprentice to tattoo professionally.  My interest is in making sure that anyone working on Stick and Poke does so safely]

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Can I submit photos of hand poked tattoos that were done by an artist, rather than myself?

You can, but I’ll admit it will probably be a while before I get to them; life’s been absolutely crazy lately

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I've been looking into snp tattoos, right now I'm apprenticing as a body piercer and I really want tattoos, I witness so many tattoos every day. But let's be real I can't afford any flat rate $80 small 'trinket' tats. I have access to learning about tattoos, but I have no information about snp. Is there any ground base info you could point me toward or lend to me about snp before I buy 3RL and 5RL tattoo needles, non toxic Winsor black tattoo ink, ink cups, and cleaning supplies for my skin?

You seem to have a good idea of what you’ll be doing, so you’ll probably know the things I’m going to tell you; but one thing a bit different from machine work is that in hand-poke, you can hear the pop of the skin when the needle goes in the proper depth.  It’s important not to go too deep or too shallow in the tattoo.

Also, you’ll likely need to go over the design several times before it’s dark enough for your liking.

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I'm going over my snp myself (A friend did it for me but id like it to be darker), but i can't figure out how to make the rig. Help?

I don’t make a rig when I do mine; I just hold the tattoo needle.

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Is Indian Ink safe?

I personally haven’t used it, and I would recommend actual tattoo ink first; but I hear about people safely using Indian Ink on a regular basis, so you SHOULD be fine...but I can’t speak from personal experience.

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Bleeding anon again. Maybe because it was on an area with stretch marks? Would that have made a difference?

It could, I don’t personally have any on stretch marks so I couldn’t tell you for sure.  I’ve had a couple that bled a little bit and it didn’t effect them(granted, those were done during weeks that my eating disorder was getting the better of me, so mine could have been due to thinned blood?)

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My stick and poke is bleeding a little bit (I just did it). Advice?

Tattoos can bleed a bit, especially if you’ve been drinking(you should never get tattoos while drunk) or if you’re on any blood-thinning medication; they will still bleed just a little bit sometimes though.

If you’re concerned shoot me a message with a picture and we can talk about it further.

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Submission from @angelofthecodeinescene!  Her first stick and pokes done on her and her friend!  I’m a sucker for tiny finger tattoos! 

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A stick and poke I did a few months back-to-back- not my first and not my last lol it needs some touching up clearly, but I’m happy with it anyways

Submission from @drunkpeach!  Wow I love this!  Reminds me a lot of the Hannibal television series

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Another submission from @itsaidanarreguin!  Did you do this one on yourself?  Either way awesome work

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Submission from @itsaidanarreguin!  Love this one; I’m a sucker for hand-based tattoos

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I just recently did this heartagram stick and poke on my leg. Took me 3 hours, but I’m happy with the final result!

Submission from @dopelessly-addicted!  I love how bold and black the lines are; what size needle did you use? I feel ya on the lengthy time front, my last one took four hours, but they’re so worth it

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Submission from @boonekat!  I love the simplistic aesthetic of it, especially the closed eye.  Keep it up!

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Hi, i've recently started doing stick and poke tattoos on myself, and I feel like I'm doing too many. I've wanted tattoos for as long as I remember, and now that I can have them, I want all of them. How should I go about limiting myself, and how much is too much. Everyone thinks I'm doing my tattoos on a whim but there are years of thought put into all of them. Do you have any advice?

Personally I don’t really have any “from practice” advice on that (I myself have done over 30 in the past 9 months; and that’s with a lot of time spent not tattooing while sick)

If you’re happy with doing tattoos often and you’re just worried about what other people think, I’d go ahead and continue as you’re going.  However, if YOU genuinely think you need to slow down, I would try limiting yourself to 2 tattoos in a month; maybe schedule the days you’re going to tattoo.  That way you have something to look forward to, as well as limiting the amount of tattoos you get in a short time.

As long as you’re putting thought and effort on what you want, and you are absolutely sure that all of your tattoos are something you definitely want; I personally don’t see a NEED to slow down.  “Too much” is subjective, and depends heavily on your personal taste.

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I have so many beautiful submissions in my inbox right now; I wanted you guys to know that I’m not ignoring them-they WILL be posted at some point, I’m just not in a great place right now so I’m kind of taking a break from a lot of internet related things.

But yeah, feel free to keep sending your work in, it will be up eventually; thank you!

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my really amazing friend ( @honeypilot ) tattooed this on me the other day, his name is douglas and he’s healing nicely !!

Submission from @possum-boy!  I don’t know if Douglas is a character from something or just a beautiful mindspawn; but either way he’s weird and I love him!

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I love stick and poking, plus I’ve been really proud of my work lately. Just a little afraid of showing all of it. Here’s a recent one I did.

Submission from @donepromising (won’t let me properly tag you). I LOVE this piece!  Reminds me very much of the wendigo from the Hannibal Television Series.

Sorry my Roommate and I have been bingeing it lately

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This was my first stick'n'poke. I did it back in December. It looks a little funny but I don’t think it was that bad for my first try.

Submission from @dominic-the-homestuck.  Everyone has to start somewhere; photo is a tad blurry but from what I can tell it’s a pretty solid line work!

My first attempt at stick and poke before I ever got into tattooing was with a SAFETY PIN(which I did not know at the time were BARBED) and india-ink from one of my art pens; I stopped fairly quickly when I realized that wasn’t working.  My young and dumb self was VERY lucky that I didn’t get an infection; what I do have is an EXTREMELY feint blue dotted line on my upper thigh; you wouldn’t know it was a tattoo or maybe even notice it at all without me pointing it out.  I get a laugh out of it lol Learn from my mistakes kiddos, use proper equipment!