Yes we hear this question all the time.  In fact if you search any major tattoo forum or even Yahoo answers you will find a bunch of people all saying help me make my tattoo.  They actually want someone to do the tattoo design for them.  However, this does not get you a good quality personalized tattoo.  If you want a true good quality tattoo hat you will love and appreciate for as long as you have it then you have to design your tattoo.  Now don't freak out because it is actually much easier then you would think.  You can easily design your tattoo and not have to ask anyone to make my tattoo for me.  This is the complete DIY tattoo guide.

Make Choices

The first and most important part of the process is to sit down and think.  You might want to use a pencil and paper if you are a visual person.  If you are not visual but an auditory person then maybe listen to music you like.  The point is do whatever it is you do to be in a creative state of mind.  For me it is driving back home from work in the car with the radio blaring.  Whatever puts you in a creative, thoughtful mood do it.  Don't force yourself just to think about your tattoo design because then nothing will come to your brain.  Instead take your time before hand and tell yourself mentally that you want to come up with a tattoo design when you are doing your thing in the next few days.  Then sure enough drive, listen to music, lay n your bed or do your thing and in  a few days time a great design will come into your mind.

The idea here is you want to think about what the tattoo will mean to you.  What do you want it to symbolize.  For example if you beat death somehow then you might want a great looking skull tattoo design to show your triumph over death.  If you have breast cancer or know someone that does you might want to symbolize that with a pink ribbon.  Just think about what the most important things in your life are and try to come up with some symbols that can communicate those ideas.

Source Materials: Think Tattoo Pics

Next you will want to spend some time finding resources and pictures.  It could be designs from an online tattoo design website or it could be a gallery of tattoo pictures that you search through.  Magazines dedicated to tattoos can be found in most book stores and can also function as a great resource for ideas.  Cut out, print out or in some other way gather all of the design sand pictures that you find.  Then place all of them in one place in front of where you will do your thinking and look at how you can combine elements from the different designs into one really cool  tattoo design.

Trace, Draw and Alter

Once you have the idea be it a feeling, emotion, a person or other concept that you want the tattoo to symbolize and then you have your resources of designs and pictures that you like then it is time to design your tattoo.  You can do it yourself if you feel artistically inclined or you can have someone do it for you.  Either way you want to start off by doing some rough sketches.  These are like a first draft of a writing assignment.  Next if you can try to refine the drawing.  You might need to trace parts of the design of others that you like and then try to combine them together.  You can also alter by adding elements and changing colors etc.  Once you have a pretty good sketch that you are happy with it is time to take it to the next level.

Hand It Over To The Professional

Now you want to hand your piece over to the professional tattoo artist.  Bring your sketches and drawings along with your resource and design materials with you.  Then when you hand it over see what the expert says about your design.  If you did a great job they might just say hey lets use this or it.  Or they might give you suggestions and tweaks on it or they might help you draw it out in a more formalized format.  The important thing is by doing your initial process of thinking, finding resources and doing some sketches you should have been much more confident in explaining the design you want to the artist.  Also at this stage you might have your heart set on an idea but make sure you are open to critical feedback and design advice from the professionals.  Make sure you trust and listen to your tattoo artist they spend all day almost every day doing this so they know what they are talking about.  Honestly if you feel they don't know what they are talking about then walk away.

Honestly I think it is kind of a shame to see so many people give away the really cool process of doing their own tattoo design.  So often people want a tattoo so badly that they will jump at any design they find with little to no thought behind it.  Thus they will take the suggestions of others on a social networking site and people they don't even know and use that for the basis of a design.  Thus unfortunately leads to a ton of bad quality tattoo designs that have the same basic designs and themes copied over and over again and lack originality.  By asking someone else to "make my tattoo" you are giving over any creative powers you might have.  You would be surprised at how creative you are if you just let yourself do it.  So what if the first rough sketch comes out with stick figures.  In the end you will have the satisfaction of know you can design your tattoo.