tattoos actually take several months to totally heal,like 3 or 4 months actually,18 hours is still a very fresh injury ,

redness,bruising,soreness for at least the first week are very normal.

as long as it is just redness and not an infection,don’t worry though,big difference in the 2,you would know if it’s infected.some redness after only 18 hours sounds completely normal to me,does not sound infected to me from what you have described.
(post a pic so we can look at it)

keep it clean.keep it out of the sun,and take care of it like any other skin injury.

I have been getting tattooed for 25 years,and for the first time last summer I got bruised from getting a tattoo,no biggy,and it went away.

and BTW,I have a sports related tattoo that I wear proudly,well,maybe more proudly next year ! LOL

@Wilkinson2016 146799 wrote:

Thanks for the reply , and dope 49ers tat! I’m a huge sports fan… But my teams suck this year too lol . How do I post a pic on here? Just because I would like someone to see if this type of redness is normal or maybe I’m just overthinking it

you can create an album here and upload to it,then link to the pic,you can also upload a pic to facebook and then copy the address of that FB pic and post it here with the image tags.

and yes, you might be overthinking it too,give it a few days.

again,keep it clean,I use Palmers cocoa butter on it(very lightly), I also scrub the new tattoo with the palm of my hand with a “anti-microbial” soap in warm water in the shower 2 or 3 times a day for the first 2 or 4 days.

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and thanks to Sam(Sam-I-Am) here,I love this palmers butter,and it’s because of you that I now use this product.