Tattoo Artists Are Sharing Their Biggest “Oops!” Moments, And These 39 Stories Take The Cake

Obligatory not a tattoo artist, but I was the one getting the tattoo.

I paid for my brother and I to get tattoos. Mine says "my brother's keeper" and his says "my sister's protector" and I was going first. Guy puts the stencil on and has me check it out in the mirror. I was only paying attention to the size and placement. I sit down and I'm ready to go. Guy asked how many tats I have so I said 14. He asked if my brother was there for any of them and I said no so he starts messing with him and saying "not a very good protector then are you?" This is as he is about to put the needle on my arm. My brother suddenly jumps across me and says "whoa whoa whoa that's the wrong tattoo" and we all look down. Sure enough, he had put the wrong stencil on me. Brother saved the day, earned his protector status and made the tattoo artist eat his words.

Not the artist, but a recipient.

My artist and I were designing a chest piece involving Odin's wolves, Geri and Freki. One would be on each pec facing outwards.

He sketched something up and sharpied the wolf on my right pec. A few hours in my artist stops, looks discerningly at the sketch, back at me, back to the sketch and says: "I did not draw nipples on the sketch...".

I'm a little confused and my girlfriend at the time screeches, starts clapping and laughing and screams "HE'S BITING YOUR NIPPLE!!!" And sure enough, my artist had not taken consideration of anatomy and and now a wolf's mouth was biting at my nipple.

What makes it so great is when my skin stretches lifting my arm and the wolf looks like it's opening its mouth and closing it. I love it!

My tattoo artist and I went to the same art school for college and were really good friends. With the exception of one, he's done all of my tattoos. I've gotten tons of compliments about the pieces I have that are more visible. I didn't get mad when he tattooed a wolf biting my nipple because my sense of humor is, at times, askew and I think it's hilarious.

Biggest o-no moment wasn't a misspelling, it was a faint. I was tattooing a guy's shoulder blade, so he was sitting upright facing away from me. It wasn't a big tattoo or anything, otherwise I usually lay people down for this, and it was busy, so just sit down and bang it out. Get about 1/3 into it, his skin goes clammy cold -big warning sign - so I start asking him if he's okay, and of course, he wants to be all tough guy about it and assures me he's fine. His face isn't too pale, so I go to start another line. He stands straight up like the Manchurian candidate, and like that, he's out. He tips forward away from me, I can't grab him fast enough with a tattoo machine in one hand and his chair in my way, and he crashes face first like a plank of wood hitting the floor. The only thing this poor SOB had going for him was he had a baseball cap pulled low and the brim saved his face from hitting full force. Everybody saw this, the whole shop, the lobby full of people, they probably heard it outside. I'm shedding gloves and putting stuff down, and my client is twitching on the floor like a fried egg. We get to him, roll him on his side, and he starts coming to, first thing he says really loud, "mmmmmMMMM PANCAKES!" Everybody burst out laughing, and my client is still pretty out of it, so he's coming to, on the floor, and everyone is doubled over in laughter. Took us a while to get him sorted and finally explain to him what happened. He had no explanation for the pancakes.

One of my clients had some nerve damage in his arm, as I went over it his arm involuntary lifted up and started shaking aggressively back and forth. He almost hit me in the face, and he's lucky I didn't accidentally tattoo a huge line across his arm. It took several seconds for his arm to stop shaking, neither of us had experienced that before lol.

Turning around after getting all my machines prepared and seeing my client rubbing one out.

I quickly asked, W*f are you doing?!? With the most shocked look on my face.

The client said, what? I needed to release some "Pressure" before being tattooed.

I just shook my head and pointed to the door.

He asked for a 13 but they drew a 31.

Not a tattoo artist, but a friend of mine's dog passed away so he wanted to get the dog's name, plus "man's best friend" inside a bone. The tattoo artist spelled the 'e' in "best" backwards and tried to fix it, but it made it worse. At one point during this session he says, "oh, hang on, let me put my glasses on so I can see better." He also gave my friend the horrifying information that he can only tattoo while drunk. My idiot friend went back to the same guy for multiple tattoos.

Not a tattoo artist, but when I went to get a tattoo when I was 18 I found out I was allergic to either the ink or the metal in the needle. Because the artist does the first line, stopped and said OK, it's gonna feel like that and then the next thing was OH NO! I stared breaking out in hives from the line he did across my chest, down my arm, up my face, one of my eyes swelled shut. He ended up calling 911 because we didn't know what was going on.

Older lady came in (mid 60s) shyly requested a humming bird on her mons venus. Halfway through the tattoo she looks down at me and asks if she can ask a question. I say "sure" she says, "can you tell I used to be a man? "
The oh was really in that until she said something, I would have had no idea.

A bloke I know got "Such is life" tattooed on his shin, but they spelled it "Sutch is life"

Such is life, I guess.

A friend of mine wanted to get the famous Caesar quote "Veni Vidi Vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered) tattooed on his upper back.

It turns out the tattoo artist put "Veni Vidi Viri", which translates from Latin as: "I Came, I Saw, Men". I was a nerd in high school and happened to take Latin as an elective, so I called it out when I saw it.

Turned out to be an easy fix.

Friday the 13th we do a $20 tattoo special. I had been working for about 12 hours and I go to tattoo this girl. She gets Finn from adventure time and the word “thirteen.” As I’m tattooing the stencil starts to rub away and I realize I spelled “thirirt” and I stop and say out loud “oh no.” I tell the girl and she agrees to let me cover it with roses. The tattoo turned out pretty good, and she has been back several times since surprisingly. I just can’t believe I misspelled “thirteen” on Friday the 13th when I had been tattooing it on people all day. There’s another one coming up next week and I’m dreading it. There won’t be any words on the flash sheets this year.

Edit: this is a very common sale in shops all over the US

Edit no2: I did use a stencil but it was an underboob tattoo and she was quite sweaty so it began to rub away. I should have stopped then and markered it back on. I am a newer artist and I made mistakes here, but god I learned from them. Luckily she was very nice and still comes in all the time to get tattoos from me.

Ex gf got a tattoo on a whim. “Expect nothing, Accept everything” I was staring at it and it bugged me. Until I had the fun time of telling her that he wrote “Expect nothing, Except everything”.

When I was getting my first tattoo, the artist was doing his thing and quickly turned around with the active machine in his hand and the clip cord got caught on my foot. This action ripped the machine from his hand and actually stuck him in the arm with the dirty needle he had been using on me. He was not happy. After a few questions about my medical and sexual history, he finished the tattoo. The funniest part is that the artist (strangely) didn't have a single tattoo on his body before I walked in, and now he has a little dot on his arm.

When the guy tattooing me asked another artist walking past "Is it I before E or...".

Managed to save it, made it look better than it was supposed to, and touched up some other stuff around it.

Always, always, always double check spelling.

Not an artist, the one receiving the tattoo.

There was a section of the tattoo where stripes were being put in. At one point, the tattoer and I both realized the stripes weren't lined up properly and he looks up at me and exclaims "There's a glitch in the matrix!"

He fixed it up so you can barely tell but if anything the imperfection and hilarity of that moment make it better.

My friend went to a guy he knew that did tattoos as a hobby at his house. He wanted "UNFORGIVEN" tattooed down his forearm.

They decided to get drunk and pop some pills as he is getting the tattoo. My friend passes out. He wakes up a few hours later and looks over at the tattoo guy who is staring at the floor with a look of defeat on his face. "I messed up man" he says. My friend looks down at his new "UNFORIEN" forearm tattoo.

I woke up in the middle of the night, sat up, and said "oh no" as I suddenly realized that 47 in Roman numerals is NOT written out "XXXXVII".. which is what I tattooed on someone earlier that week. I am usually really strict about my client, and usually also a coworker spell checking EVERYTHING, even if I'm 100% sure already. This dude have me a lot of trust and neither of us thought anything about it when I had the design printed out. I emailed him the next morning apologizing, offered him a cover up or free work (I tattooed him before and we talked about more plans in the future.) He didn't even mind, and came back several more times for other stuff.

I once “OH NO”ed when I legitimately thought I left a a burner on the stove on at home. The white hot panic on my customer’s face is forever emblazoned in my mind. Don’t worry though, I didn’t leave the stove on.

Tattoo artist misspelled the name that was going on my shoulder, underneath another piece that was already there.

Fortunately, it was when he drew the name on my skin with a pen first and then he asked me to check it *before* he got started.