The Gathering of the Schiffers™ happens once a year around the holidays. My little sister, Kate, comes up from Florida and the two of us meet up with our dad, Jack, and little brother, Danny. Fights happen, things break, things are said, the press is called. It’s a fun time. This year was nice, though, and it was the first time in many years that I spent Christmas with them.
Of course, one can’t just show up to a Gathering without something to stir the pot, so Mikeman and I came up with the idea to create temporary tattoos making fun of them. I created the designs and then use StrayTats.com to print them out as temporary tattoos.
The first design was a Comic Sans and drop-shadow parody of Kate’s first tattoo. This one came out amazingly well.
Kate thought it was hilarious. I sent a couple back with her to give to her girlfriend. She called last night, asking for me to mail her some more.
After a huge family blowout fight over the telephone a few weeks ago, Danny had blocked me on Facebook after telling everyone that I was ruining the family (I was making jokes while he was trying to be serious, because that’s my coping mechanism). Mikeman came up with the “broken family” heart tattoo idea to commemorate the drama.
My dad thought both tattoos were hilarious. Danny did too, but he refused to wear the heart. Instead, he applied the “thy will be done” one to his lower back – the same lower back which is attached to the ass that made this hole in my dad’s wall:
The tattoos cost a little under $50 for 20, but it’s based on their sizes (“thy will be done” was a whopping 6″ x 1″). The turnaround time was great, though – Mikeman and I came up with the idea on a Wednesday night, I ordered Thursday afternoon, and they arrived Monday morning. The print quality was superb, but the tattoos come out a big sticky. To remedy that, the order came with a bunch of powdered sheets of paper to rub over the sticky parts. I had to wear my blazer without my sweater under it that day because I didn’t want the lint of the sweater to stick to the tattoo and ruin my Christmas reveal to Kate.
Overall, it was a great purchase that still gets a lot of laughs. After about 3 hours of wearing the tattoo, though, I realized that I don’t think I could ever get a tattoo which I wouldn’t be sick of after that short amount of time. I think Jack should get the broken family heart one done permanently, though.
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