Inkbox Review! (Temporary Freehand Tattoo Ink)

in life •  7 years ago 

So I've been seeing ads for this company that recently popped up on my neat stuff radar called Inkbox. They do 2-week tattoos with vegan plant dye, and they have a bunch of different designs that are stick-and-peel. I was going to try them out, but every YouTube review I found of them ended up with a very faint, barely-there design, and the person saying, "I think I didn't apply it right." The process of putting them on seemed very technical and I didn't have the confidence that it would come out well.
But in addition to the stamp-style tattoos, they also had freehand ink, and it looked awesome in reviews and came up this wonderful dark blue color, so I got it! Here's how it went.

All review photos are unedited to show the results as accurately as possible.

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The ink comes in applicator bottles topped with a syringe-like tube. I got 3 for $30, totaling an ounce of ink. I had no idea how much I'd be using so I went with a larger order.
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I was terrified to attempt anything on myself since it'd be lasting for two weeks, so I had a wonderfully talented friend of mine experiment on my arm. She asked me what I liked, I said anything surrealist, mentioned my penchant for anatomical hearts, and this is what she came up with:

This is of the applied ink. She liked working with it and said it was easier to work with than henna. It's very viscous, it dries slow, and you have to really squeeze to get the ink out, but it's really easy to apply. Here's how it came out over the next few days.

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This is just after washing it off. The dye takes 12-24 hours to develop on your skin. (My camera is bad and I should feel bad)

Then over time it turned into this:

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It is slightly bolder in person. While the lotus lady was drying, I started a dragonfly and roses which we ended up collaborating on.

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Mistakes were definitely made on the linework, but it came out a lot bolder than the first one, which I like. The rose near the elbow did not stay on for the full hour, which is why it's paler, but I kinda like the contrast.

Some general pros and cons of this ink:

Cons:

  • Advertised as blue-black, definitely a navy blue at darkest. The lotus lady stayed on for a good two hours and still looks pretty faded. I'm fine with this cause it matches my hair and this was a lark, but if you're expecting black or anything close, you'll be disappointed.
  • Inkbox interacts with their customers way, way too much. I had clicked on their site from Facebook, and in addition to getting a half-dozen emails about my order and tracking numbers, they also PMed me with a bot multiple times with useless updates. Don't buy through Facebook or even visit them through Facebook.
  • Shading is just plain difficult. This is not a mark against them technically, but it's good to know. I'd keep shading to linework or crosshatching, because it's hard to put down even shading through smudging the ink, it's just an awkward viscosity.

Pros:

  • Shipping was actually what they said it'd be (about a week)
  • The ink is quality. It doesn't run in the shower, you can scrub it with soap and nothing happens, I'm not worried about staining my sheets, it's very much there to stay. Three days in and not a bit of fading.
  • It's so much fun to watch it develop over the 24 hours! It goes from almost invisible to visible from across the room in less than a day, and that process was awesome.
  • You really get your mileage out of even one bottle. All these designs did not even use up the first bottle of ink, and a few parts we went over multiple times. I could probably do two full sleeves with shading and still have a whole bottle left over.

In general, I like it. I think more experimenting is needed to get it really professional-looking. It's very hard to get decent line work out of goo stringing out of a tiny bottle. But if you decide to buy this, one bottle is plenty, do a small design somewhere to test your skills before plastering it everywhere, and have fun :)

Hope this was useful and thanks for reading! Bonus rolled-out-of-bed selfie

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Hello I vote for your article and I will add that tattoos were applied and sometimes still applied, cutting designs inside the skin and rubbing the resulting wound with ink, ashes or other agents. Some created tattoos by stinging the ink on the skin using sharp sticks or animal bones, now replaced by needles... more info: Tatuajes minimalistas en Madrid y sus significados