Got a cosplay idea but the character has lots of arm (or leg) tattoos? Don’t feel like painting on yourself with body paints or hunting down that horrendously expensive temporary tattoo paper? Here’s a quick tutorial for making tattoo sleeves using nylons and sharpie markers!
Upsides:
– Supplies are cheap! You may even have many or all the supplies you need right at home.
– Quick and not very messy! No paint is involved, and sharpie marker dries instantly.
– Easy! Great artistic skill not required.
– They move with your skin! People have legit thought these were real tattoos. From a distance, yes, but I had guys at cons with actual ink on their arms come over to compliment on my full (fake) sleeves.
– You get to eat pringles! More on that later.
Downsides:
– They are delicate. Nylons get holes in them super easy and forearms run into stuff, lean against things, and generally make it hard for the sleeves to survive. But if you only need them for a weekend, that’s ok.
– I haven’t experimented too much, but unfortunately this technique probably doesn’t work for wearers with darker skin tones. Sharpie ink is transparent, so any color it rests on just multiplies and the tattoo won’t show up very well. You’ll want to go the fabric paint or body paint route to get the best bold, bright tats.
– Can’t do white sections, because sharpie ink is transparent and doesn’t come in white. I leave them blank and they read OK, but the white areas will always be pink, tan, brown, etc. unless you dab in a little fabric paint, which will not be covered in this tutorial.
– Sharpie is supposed to be permanent marker, but on skin…it’s not. The ink will most likely wear off onto adjacent clothes. Not that big of a deal for me, as I tend to wear my tats with white shirts that can be bleached, but other shirts may not survive as well.
OK, let’s go! Here are your supplies:
You’ll need a pair of nylons, scissors, tape, a set of sharpies, your designs printed out on 8.5 x 11 paper, some bracelets, and a can of Pringles. You can use any design you want, of course, but Here is the link to these fine Newt Kaiju tattoo designs.
If your nylons have an undies part, cut the legs off and wear the undies on your head for the rest of the tutorial, if desired. Put the legs on your arm like so, and cut the toes off so you can slip your hand through. You can cut some of the top of the sleeve off as well, but don’t cut too much because you can’t put it back on if your sleeves are too short.
Here are my creepy sleeves. Now for the pringles.
Tape your design template to the Pringles can. It doesn’t reach all the way around but eh. The Pringles can gives you a nice stable surface to draw on that is roughly the shape and size of an arm. It’s a little short, so just roll up the rest of the nylon above the workspace and adjust both template and nylon down when you get to working on that part of the sleeve.
Color with the markers! I recommend doing the colored areas first and then doing the black outlines on top of it, to avoid the black ink contaminating the ink pads of the lighter markers. Remember how that always happens to the yellow ones? Eww. Nylons are thin and slide around a bit, so it’s best to use short strokes and dotting to get the ink on.
Take the template off the Pringles tube, flip the paper to the blank side and put it back on again. The paper collects the extra ink, so it’s hard to see any missed spots. Now you can see any bits you may have missed. Fill them in for completion. Also, the paper doesn’t manage to wrap all the way around the Pringles can, so now is the time to free-hand a bit of the design where the template doesn’t reach. For Newt tattoos, that’s the back of the arm.
When you’re all done coloring, put them on!
There’s a rough end to the tattoo right at the wrist, of course. Disguise where the sleeve ends and your skin begins with some pretty bracelets:
I’m a total sucker for fics where Harry is dark and gets sorted into Slytherin, but I’m also really disappointed with how Ron and Hermione are treated in them
So: dark au where the trio is sorted into Slytherin
Hermione, who wants to use knowledge to change the world
Ron, who wants to finally be free of his family’s shadow
Harry, who wants to be great, to be admired, to be free
The teachers adore quick, clever Granger, but Severus worries when he sees the way she eyes the restricted section, how her mind is filled with deadly recipes and the ways to use them
The purebloods learn not to badmouth the halfbloods, not to bully the muggleborns, because Hermione knows forbidden magic, Hermione knows the untraceable poisons and the painful curses-and Hermione knows how to avoid being caught
No one outside of Slytherin pays attention to Ronald Weasley, so quiet compared to his brothers, and that’s a mistake
Ron casts his first dark spell and the power takes his breath away, Ron sinks into the comfort of blood rituals and makes outlawed sacrifices to forgotten gods
Ron wonders how his family could abandon this happiness in favor of a flickering light
Harry, the chosen one, the special one, the abandoned one
Harry looks at the light, looks at the people that did nothing for him, and dives into the dark
Lockhart dies drinking poison, Snape finds the trio huddled around Peter’s body, the aurors that find Umbridge’s remains vomit, and the Wizarding World doesn’t notice
Voldemort rises and does not face an old man and a group of do gooders
Voldemort rises and faces a witch with a brilliant mind and no taste for mercy, a wizard that delights in bloodshed and manipulates people like he moves chess pieces, and the broken, bloody boy that’s won their loyalty
I believe that ads like this 1 might be the reason why a lot of black girls living in DC have been disappearing lately. Protect Black Girls! spread this, talk to ur siblings
misterjazzmaster 