Lucy Challenger from London travelled all the way to New York to finish a tattoo that has taken two years to complete.

The tattoo tourist flew to the New York City Tattoo Convention so a famed artist could put the finishing touches on a huge phoenix design on her left buttock, at a cost of $1,000.

Lucy Challenger’s love of inkwork should come as no surprise, as growing numbers of women are getting tattooed – and now more females than males sport body art in the U.S.

“I’ve had about 35 hours of work so far, and I’ve got another eight hours to go,” the actress told AFP.

“So I’m it bringing home for the women that, you know, we can sit there and just take it.”

Lucy Challenger flew to the New York City Tattoo Convention so a famed artist could put the finishing touches on a huge phoenix design on her left buttock, at a cost of $1,000

The complex creation has cost Lucy Challenger thousands of dollars and two trips to Los Angeles and sessions in New York and London.

“It is a big investment. Not everyone can spend that amount of money, but it is once in a lifetime,” she added.

Lucy Challenger, 28, lay in a t-shirt and not much else while the artist, who had flown in from Los Angeles, perfected the design that stretched from the top of her thigh to her lower back.

She had an iPad to distract her while the tattooist worked on the phoenix for eight hours.

Lucy Challenger was just one of the many women who attended the convention last weekend, which attracted tattoo fans from across the globe.

Many travelled to be inked by some of the most famous artists in the world and pay thousands of dollars to go under the tattoo needle.

That is what drew Lucy Challenger to the show.

“Her work is unbelievable,” she said of her tattooist.

“And I was really attracted to the fact that she’s obviously a woman and I really wanted a feminine touch in my tattoo,” Lucy Challenger told AFP.

Many tattoo artists reported an upturn in the number of women looking for body art – and one parlor owner said he would be happy to turn his establishment into a female-only business.

“I like to do feminine and positive tattoo things,” said Billy Tarr of Totem Tattoo, who added that women usually picked inkings which are “not as violent” as men’s.

A recent survey even suggested that more women in the U.S. have tattoos than do men, with 23% going under the needle compared to 19% of males.

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