Tattoos ought to be meaningful, considering the amount of time they’re going to spend on your skin. Where that meaning comes from is obviously a highly personal thing, and the sort of thing that gets people worked up.
Say what you will about astrology, but some folks identify quite strongly with their star signs, and so zodiac tattoos tend to be fairly popular. But you probably haven’t seen a zodiac tattoo quite like this.
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You wouldn’t know this girl even has a zodiac tattoo unless she told you.
But it’s there, hidden among her freckles — the constellation of Gemini. That sort of hidden appeal is part of the reason why AstroFrecks, as these are called, are catching on.
AstroFrecks are the brain child of Michigan’s Jessica Knapik, better known as @magickbrows on Twitter and Instagram.
Basically, she saw a way to combine the popularity of both zodiac tattoos and cosmetic freckle tattoos, and she has mashed them up brilliantly.
Jessica says she’s a big fan of astrology and crystals and the like, and that was largely how she came up with the idea.
“I also love things with hidden meanings,” she told Bustle . “This way you could get your Mom’s astrological sign, your Dad’s, your Grandma’s, and kind of pay tribute without getting a giant heart that says ‘Mom.'”
Her process is pretty straightforward.
Wanting the tattooed freckles to look as natural as possible, she’ll start with various swatches to get the color just right.
Then it’s a matter of drawing in the constellation and adding stars around it.
That’s the real trick: making sure the freckles look as natural as possible, and not too methodically placed, with slightly different sizes and shapes and hues, just like real freckles.
For folks who are worried about having this look on their faces for the rest of their lives, fret not.
Cosmetic tattoos are a bit different from real tattoos, and so they’ll fade in a couple of years. If you love your zodiac tat, you can always have it touched up, and if you get bored of it, it will go away all by itself.
And they don’t have to be on your face, either.
After all, people don’t just get freckles on their faces, so Jessica has done a few of her AstroFrecks on clients’ chests and shoulders.
Jessica also has some plans for the future of AstroFrecks.
She’s been experimenting with using UV ink “to make the major stars in the constellation shine under blacklight,” she told Inked . However, so far she hasn’t been impressed with the results.
