RaeAnn Ensworth gripped her dorm-room desk, preparing for the sewing needle to pierce her skin.
“Just go for it,” the then-19-year-old Ohio University sophomore urged her roommate, Liv Doepke, who was prepping Ensworth’s skin with a squirt of hand sanitizer.
Doepke held a sewing needle in the flame of a lighter until the needle turned a glowing orange. She threaded the needle and wound it tightly to a wooden pencil for grip and control.
“Here we go,” she said, dipping the needle into ink and poking into Ensworth’s clenched fist.
Blood. A grimace. Then laughter among the two roommates as Doepke permanently etched Ensworth’s skin for the first time two years ago in an exchange that was caught on video. It wouldn’t be her last DIY tattoo, either.
Indeed, go to a college party, and among the sea of red plastic cups filled with lukewarm beer, you might find a similar scene of students hunched over a kitchen table while their inexperienced friends tattoo them, a process commonly referred to as “stick and poke.”
More teenagers and college students appear to be opting for this do-it-yourself tattoo method, as evidenced by an increase of sales of at-home tattoo kits and online instructional videos. This unregulated technique — which comes with concerns for health professionals — are typically associated with underage rebellion, but the reasons go beyond that for young people.
“It’s really transformative and amazing to be very in charge of the process of changing your body,” said Claire Seid, a 24-year-old Cincinnati resident who has given more than 30 stick and pokes to friends. “I believe in the ability to shift your form as you need to and self-express with your body.”
For Allie Evans, a senior at Ohio State University who has given herself six stick and pokes, her reasons were about price and spontaneity. At a licensed tattoo shop, prices can start from $50 to $80 and increase based on complexity of the art and the time it takes to complete.
“I’m really into teeny, tiny tattoos and wanted to be able to have these small tattoos without blowing the bank,” the 21-year-old from Mason said. “Plus, I love the spontaneity. I was just sitting there and said, ‘I kinda want this tattoo today, so why not?’ ”
The most popular way for amateur tattoo artists to perform their work is to heat a sewing needle in a flame to sterilize it and tie it tightly to a pencil for gripping while tattooing. The thread acts as a buffer to stop the needle from going too deep in the skin but deep enough to keep the ink in place so the tattoo doesn’t fade. Others, such as Seid, opt for a sharper and longer tattoo needle.
The process can be excruciating — both in pain and time. Every time the needle pierces the skin, the wound must be cleaned with a sterile wipe to make sure nothing enters the bloodstream. With each poke, the needle also needs to be dipped back in the ink, in contrast to a professional tattoo gun that employs several, much-sharper needles at a time that pierce the skin for a quicker and less painful experience.
In addition, the amateur artist may repeat the process with fresh ink over the original tattoo every day for a week, consistently opening the wound to make sure the ink is deep enough, whereas a professional tattoo starts healing after it is complete.
Still, the stick-and-poke tattoo movement appears to be becoming more trendy. Do-it-yourself kits are available on Amazon and Etsy, but most of the gear can be bought at a supermarket.
Evans said that when she was living in a sorority house, she was known for her tattoos, and oftentimes her friends came to her to get inked.
“So long as you take the right precautions, it’s a fun and unique alternative to getting a regular studio tattoo,” Evans said. “Right now, it’s just something stupid college kids do that’s fun and reckless.”
Professionals in the tattoo and health industries warn about the dangers of such at-home tattooing.
“These regulations are in place to protect people,” said Kelly Newman, a spokeswoman for Columbus Public Health. “With sharing needles or not properly sterilizing them, you run the risk of blood-borne pathogens like HIV or hepatitis. If you do this, you won’t have the same protections as a licensed body-art shop.”
Though Ensworth, now a senior, was pleased with her first stick and poke, she said her second experience went “horribly wrong.”
“We started on it and got two letters in until she hit a vein and I started bleeding everywhere,” she said of a tattoo meant to spell “GRL PWR,” a condensed spelling for girl power. “We tried again the next day and it happened again, and it really freaked me out.”
That type of situation can happen frequently if the artist is inexperienced, said Gio Faenza, a senior tattoo artist at Evolved Body Art in Columbus.
“By and large, they come out terribly,” he said. “I cover up a lot of them. It lends themselves to understanding that our job isn’t as easy as they thought it is.”
Faenza said no one should consider receiving a tattoo unless it is given by a licensed professional.
“There’s a lot more involved to having a piece of art on your skin so you can enjoy it forever instead of having something you regret the rest of your life,” he said.
This article was originally published by The Columbus Dispatch on August 6, 2019.