Before and After Photos of Bad Tattoos and Their Cover-Ups

It’s a rainy Thursday lunchtime, and I’ve just asked a total stranger to show me her tattoo. Kayleigh rolls back her sleeve to reveal an Arabic word inked on her wrist. “It says ‘Andrew’,” she says with a note of weariness. Andrew was Kayleigh’s ex-boyfriend. They were together for five years, before breaking up when she was 24. She’s now 31, and often lies when people ask what it is. “I’ve been telling people it’s my dad’s name, which also feels quite weird!” Today though, this constant reminder of her past relationship will be erased: Kayleigh is getting a cover-up.

Kayleigh isn’t the first client inked with regrets to walk through the doors of Sixty Ink tattoo parlour in central London this week. That’s because for three days only, Sixty Ink has partnered with Tinder for a pop-up event in which three top tattoo artists are giving out free tattoos. But here’s the catch: The tats must be cover-ups, and they must be covering a tattoo of an ex. Last night, I watched Love Island’s Adam Collard get a tattoo in this very shop, while a clutch of press and reality TV celebrity guests milled around drinking ‘nozeco’ and taking photos of their reflections in a large mirror emblazoned with “did it for the plot”.

The harsh truth is tattoos and regrets go together like gin and tonic. According to Tinder’s data, almost half of 18-25 year olds say they have regretful tattoos from past relationships. “We’re really just trying to help people,” Sixty Ink’s owner and tattoo artist Claudio Traina tells VICE. And there are a lot of people out there who need help. He tells me that before I arrived, one of the artists had done a cover-up for a guy with a tattoo of an elephant drinking a pint: Apparently, his first date with his ex-girlfriend was in Elephant and Castle, and they had pints. She’d wanted him to get her name, but he’d opted for drunken Dumbo.

I soon get chatting to Hayley – among her many tattoos, the regrettable one in question is her ex’s name: Tom. “He was meant to get one done, but he never got it,” she says, bitterness still fresh in her voice. She and her ex split almost five years ago, so she’s wanted ‘Tom’ gone for a long time, “but there was always something more important,” she says.

A conversation she had with a potential date ended up being the final straw. “I was talking to someone and they said, ‘I couldn’t actually get with you, because I wouldn’t want to lie in bed, turn around, and see your ex’s name on your arm’,” she says, to gasps from everyone in earshot. “I did wonder if there was anything else I could turn ‘Tom’ into,” she muses, as tattoo artist Suzie perfects the new butterfly wing on her inner wrist. ‘Tomato’ perhaps? Or, as one of Hayley’s friends suggested, she could get ‘and Jerry’ tattooed beneath it. “’I’ve learned my lesson not to get a name tattooed again,” she says.

Sometimes it isn’t a name that’s the problem, as Jude proves when she arrives at Sixty Ink an hour later. “We wanted matching tattoos, and we thought, ‘How should we do that?’,” she says, before answering her own question: “Groupon”. Ten years ago, Jude and her ex-girlfriend spotted an offer for £20 tattoos, and rocked up with their own cloud design. Except, instead they got living proof that you get what you pay for. “It looks like testicles,” she says. She’s not wrong, though from another angle it also kinda looks like boobs.

It was one of those relationships that moves fast, Jude says. They moved in together quickly, and even bought a tandem bike together. “We’d ride it around the streets of Hackney,” she says. Matching tattoos were the logical next step, even if they were via a dodgy voucher code. Luckily, she’s in safe hands today. In a flash, her tattoo is fixed: the testicles are now beautiful clouds, complete with a lightning bolt and delicate sun rays.

In most of the stories I hear in the shop, the regrettable tattoos are like old scars; traces of something painful that happened a long time ago. But, then there are the others that are more, well, fresh. Ella’s tattoo was only done in August. She asked her friends, family and boyfriend of three years to hand draw little stars for her to tattoo on her shoulder. “He broke up with me three weeks ago, on FaceTime,” Ella says grimly. “It was a real slap in the face – I was about to go to sleep, had my spot cream on, sprayed my little pillow spray…” It was also the day before their anniversary. “He said he’d felt this way for ages, and I was like: ‘Why’d you let me get this tattoo? What is wrong with you?’”

Ella’s heartbreak soon seems relatively tame in comparison to Shi’s “horror story”, however. She and her ex got matching tattoos of their initials on either side of a heart; his was on the arm, and hers is on the neck. “He convinced me it would be a really great idea,” Shi says. “And then he secretly got it changed behind my back.” It wasn’t the only secret she uncovered. “I found out he was cheating and had a kid on the way.” If this wasn’t bad enough, she found out her ex’s tattoo now reads ‘marvellous’. “I want to punch him in his face,” she says.

By now it’s abundantly clear how much of an emotional nightmare it can be to look at a tattoo that reminds you of your ex – but what if your ex looks back at you? Claudio’s last booking of the day, Benedetta, got a tattoo of her boyfriend’s eyes on her arm. “They’re always there, and they stare at me – I’m tired of it,” she says. To make matters worse, for Claudio at least, he was the one who inked her five years ago. “My own tattoo! I told you don’t do it,” says Claudio, who seems almost as emotionally invested as Benedetta.

“I was really young, I was 19,” she explains. “We got engaged, and then he broke up with me after four months. This was two years ago. Then a month ago I found out that he started dating my best friend.” Both Claudio and I are stunned into silence. Get those eyes off her! But how to cover them? Pop a pair of sunglasses on top, maybe? Claudio has a better idea. I watch as he carefully etches over Benedetta’s ex’s eyes with an intricate flower design. With every new line of ink, it looks like a weight is lifting off her shoulders.

Maybe it’s because every cover-up I’ve seen today has been a work of art, or maybe it’s the tequila shot Claudio gave me, but I book in for my own tattoo at the studio before I leave. No amount of tequila would convince me to get my boyfriend’s name, though. Because, as the older and wiser Benedetta says, “even if it’s your husband, and you’ve been married for years, think about it 300 times. But… just don’t.”