DIY ‘stick and poke’ tattoo trend is taking off among students… and it’s sure to make you cringe

DIY ‘stick and poke’ tattoo trend is taking off among students… and it’s sure to make you cringe

The tattoos are becoming increasingly popular among skint students, who want permanent pieces of body art without forking out

INK-ENTHUSIASTS put off by the cost of a professional piece are turning to a controversial tattoo trend which is sure to make you wince when you hear about it.

So-called ‘stick and poke’ tattoos are becoming increasingly popular among skint students, who want permanent pieces of body art without forking out for an expensive inking.

Stick and poke tattoos involve precisely that – allowing small designs to be physically poked into the skin in the comfort of your own home.

Mimicking the respected professional hand poked tattoo style, DIY stick and pokes tend to be less intricate, and far less safe than the real thing.

The at-home tattoo trend involves using a pin, normally a sewing needle, to physically poke ink into your own skin, creating small tattoos for a fraction of the cost of a professional job.

Once popular among resourceful prison inmates, the trend has spread to university campuses around the world, where students have adopted the technique to create their own DIY ink.

But there are serious concerns about the safety of many stick and pokes, since they are often done by amateurs in university dorms – away from the safe, sterile and regulated environment of a tattoo studio.

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For a start, using a sewing needle instead of a tattoo gun is a risky move – with the chance of infection far higher if the needle isn’t expertly sterilised.

To sterilise a needle at home, stick and poke enthusiasts tend to use a lighter to burn the tip, before wrapping the needle tightly in string to absorb much of the ink.

However, the choice of ink presents another health hazard – as not every DIY tattooist uses safe, regulated tattoo ink.

Plenty of stick and pokes make use of the regular ink found inside a ball-point pen, breaking them open in order to get at the cheap liquid inside.

And their at-home nature means many under-18s turn to these DIY inkings as a way to get around rules on how old you need to be before you can go under the needle professionally.

What’s more, the budget tattoos are said to be even more painful than regular inkings, as the needle, which is often taped to a pencil for stability, can’t go as deep into the skin as regular tattoo guns can.

This means that painfully-poked areas will need multiple goings over before bold lines can be drawn – and even then stick and poke tattoos tend to fade faster than professional ones.

The DIY trend has been popular for decades, with the safer aspects of stick and poke tattooing already adopted by many professional artists.

Even celebrities such as Rihanna and Kesha sport what look like stick and poke tattoos, although you can bet that they didn’t get them in a dingy student dorm.

Nicole West, a former biology teacher who has conducted research into DIY tattoos, told The Washington Post: “The contamination of materials with biological pathogens from sharing needles with your friends can happen, whether you sterilise it quickly with a match or not.

“You’re young, you’re intoxicated, you don’t know — HIV, hepatitis C, all the major killers that are bloodborne can be passed quickly.”