Homemade Temporary Tattoo

How to Make a Custom Temporary Tattoo

The reason I'm posting this is because almost all of the "How-To"s I found involved either Temporary Tattoo Paper (very expensive) or sharpies. The reason I didn't like the sharpies is I wanted to test the tattoo out on my back (yes, the picture is on my arm, but that was because I wanted a quick test, I didn't think this method would actually work!) Needless to say, I don't trust my so very mature (yeah, right) boyfriend, Tom, drawing with sharpies on my back. This is the method I'll be sharing with you today. Just making sure to give proper credit. I'd appreciate you reading mine as well, though! :)

Here is what you will need:

-Your image
-Printer
-Backside of a used sheet of stickers (where the stickers stick to)
-Glue stick
-Scissors
-Fine point sharpie (optional)

1. My original design was one I drew, see!

As you can see, that's a dime for perspective purposes.

2. I sent the image from my phone to my computer. I cut out the dime and edited the picture as best I could to make the paper as white as possible and the pencil as black as possible. I did this by experimenting with the brightness and contrast settings in plain ol' Microsoft Word.

3. Unless your image is perfectly symmetrical, you need to flip your it so it's a mirror image of the original. I hope that's not confusing.

4. Take your sticker paper, make sure this is NOTHING on it. No stickers, or that annoying outline of sticker that no one ever uses. This should be a glossy sheet of thin paper.

5. Load it into the printer making sure it will print on the GLOSSY side. Fortunately the backs of stickers are so easy and cheap to come by, it's no big deal if you mess up. I did, three times! :)

6. Who can guess what's next? Print!

7. Spread some glue from your glue stick on your skin where you want the tattoo to be.

8. Cut out your printed image, making sure not to smudge it, it will be wet for a while.

9. Place your image printed-side-down on top of the glued patch of skin. 

10. Hold it there for a good 10-20 seconds and carefully peel off.

There you go! Your own temporary tattoo without all the waterslide paper nonsense. (It was funny to see people's faces when asking for this at Staples or AC Moore). I did notice that mine came out more grey than black so since my test spot was on my arm, I could easily go over the design with a sharpie fine point marker and darken it up, but it's up to you. Play around with the length of time holding it on your skin, if the ink is dry or wet, and maybe even wiggling it around to get more of the ink from the sheet to your skin.

Thanks for reading! If you like my posts, I definitely suggest that you...