Celtic Design

Product Review: Celtic Tattoos

Do you want a tattoo, but still feel pretty apprehensive about getting one? A great way to go until you are ready to commit is with a temporary tattoo. Temporary tattoos give you a lot of flexibility because you can try different designs and locations on your body and in a week or so they will wear off.

I am interested in getting a tattoo, but still have some reservations so I decided to try a temporary tattoo kit. I recently purchased a kit at Barnes & Noble called Celtic Tattoos for $9.95. I wasn't interested in the Celtic Design, but got the kit because it came with the paint, transfers, transfer pencil, and brush. A book on Celtic tattoos came with the kit as well. The book contained a history on jagua, the die used for temporary tattoos, some information about body painting, how to draw Celtic designs, and some designs you could use for tattoos.

My temporary tattoo was some symbols that I traced onto the transfer paper with a regular pencil. Next I had to flip the transfer over and trace the image with the transfer pencil. After completing the image I cut the transfer to size and picked my placement spot (the inside of my left forearm). Then I dampened my arm with a wet cloth and placed the transfer on my arm. I had to tap the transfer to make sure the lines showed up on my arm. Up to that point the whole ordeal was fairly easy. The application of the jagua die was a bit tricky. Using the application brush I literally had to scoop the jagua out of the jar to apply it. After I applied the first layer I had to let it dry before putting on additional layers. In essence the process wasn't difficult, but it was hard to draw straight lines and do small spaces. An applicator bottle would have been better. After finishing my tattoo it had to dry for a whole 2 hours before I could rinse the gel crust off with cool water. The final step was to wait for the ink to completely turn colors and that could take anywhere between 24-48 hours. Once my jagua gel was rinsed off it looked like a yellowish green bruise and that's about as good as it got. It was pretty faint and lasted around 5 days.

I was pretty disappointed with this kit and wouldn't recommend it to anyone wanting a temporary tattoo. You can get better products, that include multiple colors for not much more than you paid for this kit. If I decide to do a temporary tattoo again I will probably use Temptu paints, which is a product that they use in movies when an actor needs a tattoo.