40+ Tattoo Artists Are Sharing Unfortunate Errors They Made on a Client

Tattoo artists are humans, too, ya know! We all make mistakes in the workplace from time to time, and that includes tattooists. They aren’t robots, and they certainly aren’t master spellcheckers with an encyclopedic knowledge of every language! Keep reading to hear 40+ embarrassing stories from tattoo artists who made some awkward blunders at work. We have to respect their honesty!

In any line of work, people are going to make mistakes now and again. Unfortunately, tattoos are pretty permanent. Yes, they can be removed, but this is usually an expensive and time-consuming process. So, no one wants to be in this position.

This tattoo shop receptionist was left cringing when they heard about this blunder. The tattooist had misspelled the client’s nickname, ‘Neighborhood,’ turning it into ‘Neigborhood.’ At least the client didn’t make much of a fuss! What a relief.

Getting a back piece is a pretty big commitment, to say the least! It’s incredible to see the sheer artistry that goes into designing such a huge piece. However, this client was left feeling bemused after sitting down for three intensive sessions.

No one had noticed that the tattoo was mirrored the wrong way, and each car had its steering wheel on the wrong side. The client didn’t catch it as they had been checking their progress in a mirror!

Sometimes, omitting one simple letter can completely alter the meaning of a tattoo. That’s exactly what happened with this outrageous ‘belly rocker.’ Popularized by musicians and rockstars like Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee, these huge tattoos are not subtle.

Usually written in a bold, gothic script, these tattoos stretch across the stomach of the client. This belly rocker couldn’t believe their bad luck when they realized that their massive tattoo unfortunately said “scared for life” instead of “scarred for life.”

When getting a tattoo in a foreign language, you have to double-check every single word. Scratch that — you have to triple-check every letter! People can often be lazy or cut corners when designing their ink, and it’s not the tattoo artist’s responsibility to spellcheck every word.

This is especially true when they don’t speak the language that the tattoo is in. Languages with their own alphabet can be incredibly difficult to get right, as this client found out.

This tattoo artist was in for the fright of their life when their client decided to prank them! They had been working hard when suddenly, the client calmly said, “there are two Ls, right?” It was past the point of no return.

The tattoo artist recoiled in shock. They were under the impression that the name was Gabriela, with one L. Thankfully, the client was only kidding! We can only imagine how terrifying this would have been for the poor tattooist!

It’s common for a group of friends to place bets with each other, often with a particularly nasty forfeit involved. This tattoo artist became embroiled in a tense situation when they had agreed to tattoo a client who had lost a bet with his buddies.

The catch was that the client’s friends got to choose the design. They picked a weird image of a leprechaun throwing up on a book! The client was horrified when he saw the final piece.

On the r/AskReddit message board, many tattoo artists have shared their biggest tattooing blunders. There’s one common theme with the responses — many clients forget to check the spellings of their tattoos, and proceed to get angry when they realize that they had requested a misspelled design.

This woman reacted in anger when she found out that her Italian tattoo was incorrectly spelled, even though the tattoo artist had asked her to check it on multiple occasions. How frustrating!

We have to respect this tattoo artist for owning up to their mistake. In this situation, lots of people would have tried to blame the client or somehow attempt to cover up their error. Halfway through tattooing a four-letter acronym on their unwitting customer, this tattooist realized that they had switched around two of the letters!

At first, they thought it wasn’t their fault, but a quick check of their email revealed that it was, in fact, their mistake.

When getting a sentimental date tattooed, it’s kind of obvious that you should make sure the numbers are correct. One woman learned this the hard way, after comparing matching tattoos with her husband.

They had originally intended to mark their wedding anniversary and child’s birthday, but when they both left the tattoo parlor, they soon realized that the wife had given her tattooist the 15th of the month, instead of the 14th! This is a pretty awkward mistake to make.

It’s natural to expect a father to know the spelling of their son’s name. Unfortunately, this doting dad did not possess any attention to detail. He wrote the name down incorrectly and didn’t notice until it was too late. Instead of saying ‘Bentley,’ the tattoo read ‘Bently.’

After enduring the pain of the tattooist’s needle for hours, he was left with a misspelled tribute to his beloved son. Imagine how awkward it must have been explaining this to his wife.

The Masters of the Universe franchise is a beloved series created by Mattel. One diehard fan decided to get a tattoo of Cringer, the sidekick of Prince Adam, better known as He-Man! However, the ink didn’t quite turn out how he expected.

The tattoo artist got carried away and began coloring the cat’s stripes in black ink. Cringer is not your average tiger, and his stripes are actually orange! The tattooist was devastated when he realized what he had done.

Life is weird. Nobody can quite comprehend how everything works, and Murphy’s law is an old adage that sums up the mysterious workings of the universe. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.

Believe it or not, Murphy’s law was put into action when a tattoo artist accidentally misspelled the phrase while inking it on a client’s skin! They were left with ‘Murpy’s law’ written on their body permanently. At least the mistake was appropriate in this context!

Here’s another ironically misspelled tattoo that’s bound to make you giggle! This tattoo artist risked getting fired after this monstrous mistake. They were tattooing the face of a client, only to realize that they had spelled the word ‘cursed’ as ‘cusred.’

The tattoo wasn’t exactly subtle either, as it stretched above the customer’s eyebrow. In their defense, they had shown the client the stencil before getting started, and they hadn’t picked up on the mistake either. Big yikes.

Many people choose to honor their religious beliefs by getting sentimental, spiritual tattoos that mean something special to them. This unlucky tattoo artist made a big mistake when they butchered the spelling of this book of the Christian bible!

Instead of saying ‘Philippians,’ the ink unfortunately read ‘Philippines,’ — just like the southeast Asian country. Hopefully, the client was able to channel some of the principles of their religion and treat the tattoo artist with a sense of grace and forgiveness!

When tattooing any client, you have to take their skin texture into consideration. Different parts of the body have different levels of skin thickness, and some sensitive areas must be treated with the utmost care and attention. When you’re starting out in the tattoo industry, it’s easy to take this for granted.

This Reddit user learned the hard way when they were tattooing the inside of their client’s elbow. The lines ‘blew out,’ causing the ink to smudge messily.

It’s said that patience is a virtue, and this is an important quality to have when you’re a tattoo artist. On the r/AskReddit subreddit, one unlucky individual revealed that their worst tattoo mistake was actually on their own body.

They had attempted to tattoo themselves using the ‘stick and poke’ method. This risky technique involves poking the skin with a sterilized needle dipped into a pot of ink. They didn’t have the patience to finish their own tat!

This is a common error that plagues many tattoo artists in the early days of their careers. A client comes in and asks for a design, only to change their mind at the last minute. They want it placed on the opposite side. So, these rookie tattooists head to their computer to mirror the image.

However, this doesn’t work when designing intricate pieces like clock faces. Rather than saying 4:20, this unlucky customer was left with a 7:40 tattoo!

Soccer fans will recoil in pain after reading about this unfortunate tattoo fail! In the English Premier League, Manchester City and Manchester United are the two rival clubs coming from the same city in the north of England.

Diehard fans are raised by their families to despise the opposite team, which is what makes this mistake even more painful! The tattoo artist absentmindedly wrote the wrong acronym underneath this Manchester City tattoo, inking ‘MUFC’ underneath the badge! Imagine how the client reacted…

There can be a lot of tears in tattoo parlors. Sometimes clients sob in pain when getting inked. Others well up with emotion after seeing their sentimental tattoos for the first time. In this case, the client began crying when they thought that their tattoo had been applied ‘backwards.’

The artist initially thought they had made a mistake, but they soon realized that the client had been looking at their ink in the mirror, viewing the image flipped horizontally. Duh!

We can’t help but feel sorry for the client in this situation. They had been getting their first tattoo — a full back piece, nonetheless — and the tattoo artist had messed up when applying the stencil.

Due to their slightly larger-than-average stature, the stencil had missed some folds of skin, and there were huge gaps in his intricate tattoo! Hopefully, the artist was able to fix their mistakes, because this is a silly error to make. What a fail.

No one wants to admit that they’ve made a mistake, but sometimes you have to own up to your errors. The owner of this tattoo studio let their client down when they refused to take responsibility for a terribly misspelled piece.

They were supposed to get the word ‘granddad’ inked onto their skin, but they ended up with ‘gradad’ instead. The studio fired the artist but didn’t offer the customer any kind of compensation or complimentary cover-up. They didn’t even apologize or take responsibility!

When you mess up a tattoo, it’s natural to expect an outburst of some kind. We mean, you’re literally marking their skin with permanent ink. Most laser removal procedures and cover-ups end up being super costly and time-consuming, so no one wants to be in this position.

One tattoo artist shared a rather unexpected reaction that they received from a client, after accidentally applying their sheet music tattoo upside down! Rather than crying or yelling, the customer simply shrugged it off!

This shocking tattoo story is hard to believe! This artist was inking a man who revealed himself to be a serial adulterer. He originally asked for the name ‘Tierny,’ and the tattooist assumed that this was the moniker of a loved one.

However, the customer began to get cold feet and asked for the name to be changed to read ‘Diane’ at the last minute. It turned out that Tierny was their mistress, while Diane was their long-suffering wife! Shocker.

When you first start tattooing people, mistakes happen quite often. This Reddit user found out the hard way when they attempted to tattoo their friend in their teenage years. Despite being monitored by a host of professionals, the ink was still a complete disaster.

They attempted to freehand the entire design before going over the outline. Unfortunately, no one realized that when the client stood normally, one side of the geisha’s face drooped significantly. How embarrassing is that?!

In the tattoo community, amateur artists that stick and poke their friends without any qualifications or professional training are often known as ‘kitchen wizards.’ This rookie took matters into their own hands when tattooing a portrait of their friend’s child.

They had failed to acknowledge the fact that the child was actually a boy, and they had drawn a collection of hearts, bows, and the words ‘Daddy’s Girl’ in cursive script. Why did they not let the client check it beforehand?!

Imagine hearing a tattoo artist utter the word, “Whoops.” This is definitely the last thing you want to hear when sitting in the chair of a tattoo studio. This Reddit user shared their disastrous tattoo experience, revealing how their tattooist let out this fateful word while in the middle of tattooing their foot.

To this day, they haven’t bothered to get the design covered up. At least it was only 60 bucks. Maybe they’ve grown fond of their weird tattoo.

Here’s a story of another honest tattoo artist who will happily own up to their mistakes. The book-worm tattooist was inking the word ‘forward’ onto a client when they allowed their love of literature to subconsciously affect their work.

The client had spellchecked the tattoo, but had failed to realize that the ink actually read ‘foreword,’ as in the chunk of text at the beginning of a novel/story! We guess both individuals are to blame in this situation.

Occasionally, the lines of delicate tattoos can ‘bleed out,’ causing the letters to bunch together in an unsightly mess. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to this unlucky lady. She visited a tattoo parlor to receive a small tattoo of some cursive script, but it didn’t go quite as planned.

It looked good when it was finished, but over the subsequent days, the letters started to bleed together, destroying the effect of the tattoo. At least she got a refund.

This story is unlike any of the others on this list. While the tattoo artist in question may have made plenty of mistakes, this was through no fault of their own. Their old-school boss at the tattoo shop refused to allow them to buy an up-to-date tattoo machine.

They also refused to provide them with a legitimate power source! Therefore, when they attempted to tattoo clients using their homemade machine, the designs often ended up wonky. Surely this is illegal?

Who’s in the wrong in this scenario? A client walked into a tattoo shop, with a printed-out image of their desired ink. They went ahead with the appointment, and then complained to the tattoo shop when they realized that their symbols were the wrong way round.

Was it the client’s fault for giving them the wrong image, or should the tattoo artist have checked the accuracy of the symbols? We think the customer may have messed up here.

Uh oh. When you get a sentimental date tattooed on your skin, you should probably double-check that you have all the details correct before committing to the ink. This Reddit user ended up with a beautiful hummingbird tattoo dedicated to their late grandmother, accompanied by the wrong date of birth.

How many times do we have to say it? Make sure that you give the tattoo artist an accurate brief. If you mess up, it’s simply not their fault!

It’s so awkward when a tattoo ends up being spelled wrong. But, it’s even worse when this spelling error completely changes the meaning of the entire sentence! You can only imagine how upset this client was when she saw that her ‘Born 2 Lose’ tattoo ended up saying ‘Born 2 Loose.’

It’s not exactly the most flattering phrase for a woman to have inked on her arm. Hopefully, the studio offered her a free cover-up to make up for this blunder.

Portrait tattoos can be difficult to get right. It’s important to try and create a likeness of the person you’re replicating, or else you risk creating a very unhappy customer. This portrait tattoo went hideously wrong when the tattoo artist messed up the facial hair!

When attempting to draw the person’s beard, they actually created an unflattering goatee-mustache combo that resembled a certain evil historical figure. After hours of sitting in the chair, it’s safe to say that the client was less than impressed!

After-care is an integral part of the tattoo process. If you don’t look after your skin after getting a tattoo, you can end up with nasty scars, or even an infection. This tattoo artist chose to apply ‘second skin’ — a medical-grade, transparent, adhesive barrier that’s used to protect fresh ink.

However, they didn’t seal the bandage correctly. When the client took a shower, the area became wet. Suddenly, their tattoo became one unsightly wet scab. Not an ideal situation!

Ear tattoos aren’t particularly common, and they can be tricky for inexperienced tattoo artists to perfect. This particular tattooist got themselves into a sticky situation when attempting to learn the skill from their mentor.

They showed them a technique involving cotton swabs, which allowed the tattooist to peel the folds of the ear back using the utensils. Disaster struck, and the Q-tip slipped from their hand. They lost their grip and ended up drawing permanent ink dots all over their client’s ear!

Here’s another horror story involving amateur tattooists and their cowboy equipment! This Reddit user told the story of a friend on their college campus who decided to start their own sketchy business. One poor “client” ended up with a Mercedes Benz logo instead of a peace sign on her pelvis. Big mistake.

Consider this a public service announcement — do not buy cheap tattoo machines from eBay, and definitely do not accept a tattoo from someone who isn’t a trained professional.

Latin phrases are a popular tattoo choice for a host of reasons. They are often chosen to represent important concepts and famous mottos like ‘carpe diem’ or ‘veni vidi vici.’ And they tend to make the owner seem intellectual and sophisticated.

However, these two pals learned that they should probably use spellcheck before printing their tattoo designs off Microsoft Word. Rather than the Latin words ‘Veritas’ (meaning truth) and ‘Aequitas’ (meaning justice), they ended up with nonsensical words like ‘Equites.’

Symmetry is important when applying armband tattoos. You want to ensure that both stencils are placed in the exact same place on either limb, or else the client will end up looking disproportionate and weird! This tattoo artist was thrilled when they finally nailed the stencil placement.

They eagerly got to work tattooing matching armbands on their client, until they made a shocking realization — they had tattooed the same date twice. The client wanted two different dates on each arm.

Horses are majestic creatures, and many equestrian enthusiasts choose to ink their skin with tributes to their favorite animal. Not in this situation, though. In another classic case of mistranslation, one man found out that his kanji tattoo didn’t quite have the intended meaning.

A woman approached him and asked him about the meaning of his tattoo. When he told her it said, “I love my mother,” she quickly informed him that it actually said, “I love my horse.”

Here’s another chaotic DIY tattoo moment. One girl decided to ink her own skin to commemorate her late father. She chose some lyrics from his favorite song, “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. She also wanted to film the process for a student film project.

If you think this sounds like a recipe for disaster, you’re right. She ended up forgetting how to write a cursive ‘M,’ instead inking, “We’re just two lost souls, swinning in a fishbowl.”

Some of the more skilled tattoo artists out there are able to skillfully disguise their mistakes. Everyone messes up from time to time, but true pros often manage to style it out and make their errors seem intentional!

That’s exactly what happened when one tattooist accidentally dipped into a pot of dark green ink when shading a butterfly tattoo. They immediately suggested that the butterfly could be resting on a leaf. Now, that’s what we call thinking on your feet!

Tattooists often use stencils to provide guidelines as they work on a piece. This is the best way to prevent mistakes and allow for plain sailing when the client is in the chair. However, sometimes these stencils can rub off in the middle of the tattooing process.

This confident tattoo artist decided to freehand the text on this tattoo, but their spelling skills didn’t quite match their artistic skills. Instead of ‘Remember Me,’ they ended up writing, ‘Rememer Me.’

The past few years have seen the rising popularity of ‘hypebeast’ culture. In an attempt to keep up to date with the latest trends, these self-proclaimed hypebeasts buy designer clothing and expensive sneakers. Some of them take their dedication to the next level with tattoos of their favorite luxury brands.

If you’re going to flex by getting a designer tattoo, just make sure that the artist knows how to draw the logo the right way round. What a mess.

The unimaginable has happened, and you’ve made a mistake when inking a client. In this situation, you have a few options. You can cover the customer a heavy discount, including offering the tattoo for free.

You could pay for laser removal, or you could offer some free or discounted cover-up sessions. This tattoo artist decided to go the extra mile by covering their client’s botched ink for free, giving them a half-sleeve in the process! Everyone loves a freebie.

Making a mistake when giving someone a tattoo is always an awkward situation. Although they wanted to do their friend a favor by giving them a tattoo, this unfortunate artist ended up causing more problems for their pal.

They were recovering from a migraine and hadn’t quite regained their composure, so the alien ended up lopsided and wobbly. And as it was a hand tattoo, it wasn’t exactly easy to hide! In hindsight, they really should have rescheduled the appointment.