ChaosDani

Maybe they'll all get lasered together when she gets older, so she won't have to feel different then either. I think this is about making the parents feel special, rather than making the child feel accepted. I don't think they had the foresight to think about how the child will feel about it when she gets older. My guess is she won't like it. There are better ways to go about making a person feel accepted and loved. Making a big deal about of their faults, or "blemish" as the article says, is not the way to do it. To me, this is sending the message that how she looks is more important than her other qualities. And since she doesn't "look perfect" the parents are going through great lengths to make sure she doesn't feel bad about it. It doesn't sit well with me that the mother says she was "heartbroken" and that she "sobbed and sobbed knowing my baby was going to permanently marked for the rest of her life." It's just a birthmark! That baby is still beautiful! And beauty isn't everything anyway. I dunno, maybe I'd feel differently if I had a birthmark. Or a child, for that matter.

@SStu That filigree is gorgeous! Congrats to Wifey.

"Traditional american" is theme enough. I think the style lends itself well to having a bunch of random stuff. Because they're so bold, and the color palette is limited, they are going to look cohesive together no matter what the subject matter(s).

Whaaat?! I didn't realize the premier was tonight! Thanks for the heads up!

I love that gorilla! Great stuff!

As a bunch of other people here have already said, breathing really makes a difference. Or at least for me it did. I try to get into a rhythm with slow, deep breaths. I have about 13 hrs worth of work on my ribs/hip, and I kept on telling myself that if I drew a sharp breath, or if I wasn't breathing in a predictable way, it would screw my artist up. I'm not really sure how true that was, but the fear was enough to keep me breathing steadily pretty much the whole time. And when it got pretty painful, that thought kept me concentrating on my breath, which distracted me from the pain. It was less of a "zoning out" and more of a zoning in - thinking about how even I can make my breath, and how smooth I can make the expansion and contraction of my ribs with my breath so that there were no "rough edges" in my breath cycle.

I find mostly whitetails and raccoons here too. I can always use raccoon parts for jewelry. Whitetails I can take or leave. Most of my finds are from walking the dogs along the road or the railroad tracks. I'll only bring em home if they're mostly clean. Being in the suburbs with neighbors fairly close, I'm not set up to do a whole lot of processing myself. I do have a few maceration buckets going in the summer, but nothing that'd work for something as big as an elk. Never tried boiling cause I never find anything that fresh - I don't hunt, and my husband doesn't do small game - and I'm afraid to bring that stuff into my kitchen. So I end up buying skulls from flea markets and such, and while they are clean of fleshy stuff, they usually need some kind of additional processing to degrease/whiten. I've picked up a few on a skull group on facebook as well. Actually I just bought a really nice ram skull from there for a steal. I'm probably going to have to figure out a way to finish cleaning and whitening it. That could be a big challenge, but I'm excited. I hope you get your elk in Colorado!

@Tornado6 I love that first photo. That's a good looking bear. I have a bear skull that I picked up at an estate sale a while back and it is sooo greasy. I have been trying to degrease it for a year and it's still kinda yellow. Yours is so nice and white! Very envious of the wolf and mountain lion, too. And the last photo is cool. I like side-by-side comparisons of different species. Do you find and/or hunt and process them yourself?

Yes, well I was speaking more to the fact that bad tattoo designs are incredibly popular, not necessarily the fact that poorly executed tattoos done in unsafe environments are popular. That's a whole different issue. The things-turning-into-birds thing is a bad tattoo whether it was done in a legit shop by a good artist or not.

Nice! Love that lady head flip!

Voted. And I love the picture! Good luck!

Nice! I'd love to have an elk. You should post up some pics of your collection. Sounds like you've got a lot of cool stuff!

Cool! You teach Wildlife ID, or you were taking a class? I collect skulls too! Is that a whitetail?

I just finished watching the first season of AHS. It was ok. Parts of the story really drew me in, but then other times I was like WTF? It seemed to me like the writers didn't have any plans on how they were going to progress and end the season when they started. And it was kind of abrupt in the end. But overall, I liked the story. My favs of all time are Game of Thrones, True Detective, Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black, and the Shield.

No love for Riff Raff. But I admit the song you posted isn't that bad. It's not something I would listen to, but it is kinda catchy. The first one that was posted is pretty cringe-worthy though. And the video was just beyond bad.