By
eHow Careers & Work Editor
Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Step1
Select a piece of practice skin. Make sure it's sized to the specifications you need for the piece you'll be tattooing. You can either cut down a larger piece or choose one from the various sizes available. Besides square pieces, you can also find oval, rectangular and round pieces for sale.
Step2
Put a design on the skin. Use a stencil or draw a design freehand onto the skin like you would do for a regular tattoo. Stencils can be applied just like you regularly would on real skin. Hand drawn designs can be applied with a ball point pen, sharpie or tattoo surgical marker.
Step3
Strap the practice skin to a body part. For a better feel of what it'll be like to tattoo on a real person, attach the piece of skin to various body parts to get used to the various curves and contours you'll be working with on the human form.
Step4
Set up your tattoo machine. Load your tattoo machine(s) with the same needles you would choose for the same design if done on a person or if you're practicing new techniques, try some different needles than you'd normally use to see what the differences would be.
Step5
Get your ink ready. Use the same brands of ink and the colors you would use for regular tattooing. It will work the same on the practice skin, so you can see what the affect would be if the tattoo had been done on real skin. The end result will be darker than what the healed tattoo would look like on human skin.
Step6
Start tattooing. Complete the all the outline first and then the shading. Work in your colors from darkest to lightest.
Step7
Use Vaseline to clear away excess ink while you're tattooing on the practice skin. Clean away any residual ink that was smeared during the process and show off your latest creation.