Shawn Mendes got tattoos the way most people fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once. Three years ago, the "Can't Have You" singer had only one. Now, he has six — actually make that seven. Mendes just added another tattoo to his fast-growing collection, and the design came straight from Twitter.
On Sunday night, Mendes posted a Boomerang video to his Instagram Story showing that he was in the middle of getting inked by tattoo artist Livia Tsang. The tattoo? Butterfly wings, half of which burst into a bouquet of flowers. Cool, right? Well, the backstory behind where and how Mendes found the design is quite unique.
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Last week, a Mendes super fan, Kayla (@nasaruins), posted two edited photos of the singer on Twitter with a — fake! — butterfly tattoo on his left arm. "Shawn Mendes with a butterfly tattoo," she tweeted. "I rest my case." One day later, Mendes retweeted the photos, writing "Wait this is awesome, can u DM the drawing ??"
Wait this is awesome, can u DM the drawing ?? https://t.co/0y5b3S584Y
— Shawn Mendes (@ShawnMendes) July 18, 2019
After a brief direct message exchange with Kayla, Mendes got ahold of the butterfly design, which was originally created by Chile-based tattoo artist, who goes by @macdreaper on Instagram. Turns out, Mendes loved the idea of the tattoo so much he made it permanent. On Sunday night, Tsang posted a photo of Mendes with the finished tattoo.
This isn't Mendes' first fan-designed tattoo. Two years ago, he tweeted to his fans that if someone designed him a tattoo in honour of his second album, Illuminate, he'd get it. About a week later, he did.
Mendes talked about the fan-created tattoo on Heat Radio's morning show with Emily Segal in June 2017. "They designed this lightbulb with roots coming out of the bottom," he explained. "On the inside are these blue orchids, the same colour that we've used for the whole tour. It was beautiful." He added that he's well aware that his fans are impressive artists. After putting out the request for a tattoo design, he was confident that it would result in something beautiful. The finished design was later revealed in Mendes' "There's Nothing Holding Me Back" music video.
Mendes has five other tattoos in his collection, all of which are just as meaningful as the last — and if he wanted to get a couple tattoo with his rumoured new girlfriend, Camila Cabello, we wouldn't be opposed.