5 Things I Didn't Know About Getting a Scar Cover Up Tattoo (2024)

This is probably the coolest tattoo I have. It is a scar cover up that is an illusion of several animated characters bursting through my skin with some plants and a galaxy background. The characters include (counterclockwise from the left) Vaporeon & Mimikyu (Pokemon), a bird from Clover (by CLAMP), Iron Valiant (Pokemon), a machine & jellyfish from Dramatical Murder, another Clover bird, and Milotic from Pokemon. You also might notice that I have already cosplayed several of these creatures, or plan to cosplay them (see my Cosplay page).

Trigger warning: Discussions of self harm.

Additional  closeups: 

1. Make sure to check with your tattoo artist that they are willing to do scar cover ups and also ask them for examples of their past scar pieces specifically. Some tattoo artists may not be willing to do them and for the artists that do, you want to get a feel for how they do it. Also, pay attention to how they explain/talk to you about covering up scars. When you two are designing your tattoo, make extra extra sure you are confident about liking the final tattoo. Unlike regular tattoos, you have the extra difficulty of making a design that will be able to work with the scar tissue, the scar's shape, and the scar's placement. And a good tattoo artist will ask you if the scar is absolutely healed.

2. My scar was a thick keloid scar surrounded by multiple smaller scars of varying sizes (more on that later). And possibly because of the density of the scar tissue, that area didn't hurt during the process at all!

3. All the moisturizing that you're doing to the tattoo during the healing process, will actually help make your scar & the surrounding skin feel softer too! 

4. The biggest thing I've never seen anyone mention- if it's a big permanent keloid scar like mine, a cover up tattoo won't make it "go away". It will only hide it from a front flat viewing angle. When you're looking at an angle down or across your own body, depending on how the design is (ie line work vs colors), you might still be able to see the texture of the scar showing through the tattoo and that includes any "weird" shiny scar skin that you originally had. 

5. Here is a trigger warning time. You can skip this if you're uncomfortable as I'm just sharing part of my personal story. If you look at the jelly fish + machine on the bottom right corner of my tattoo, you might notice that there is a small semicolon in the window. Semicolon tattoos usually symbolize those who are in support of or have experience with self harm and suicide. Here's a couple of things I learned specifically relating to this: Now I want to cover up my other scars because this tattoo only covers up some of them. Only I can see it but there's actually some much smaller flat scars that are only partially covered by Milotic, Mimikyu, and Vaporeon. For me personally, I also found the scar really "ugly" to look at, not just emotionally, but visually since it was so big. But having a cool piece of art permanently covering it, definitely makes it less "ugly" to me. I also have multiple tattoos and while I did get purely positive feelings from my other pieces, the history to this scar was a lot more complicated and therefore the resulting emotions was also complicated. Afterwards, I felt happy that it was finally finally fiiiinally covered up and less "ugly".

If you had similar experiences to me, you might also get a huge relief from finally closing a possibly unpleasant chapter in your life. Just note that tattoo therapy obviously does not replace professional therapy but the experience of the cover up tattoos can certainly feel euphoric.