Everyone who has had an old tattoo covered up, has a story to tell.

For some, it’s replacing a regrettable tattoo, a hastily planned design picked as a teen or the name of an ex, with something more meaningful. For others, it’s to improve on an existing design.

“Pretty much everyone that comes to me has a reason behind (their tattoo),” said John Fish, a lifelong artist who opened FishInk four years ago in Norwich.

Debbie Russell of Norwich went to FishInk to cover up a rose with her four children’s names, and a lion with the name of her ex. They were remade with roses, and a third tattoo was covered with a butterfly.

“Oh my God, he’s done so many for me,” she said of Fish, who runs his tattoo studio out of his home.

Roses are one of many tools in a tattoo artist’s arsenal for cover-ups. Fish said roses and other flowers work well because the petals and leaves can be easily repositioned to cover details in an existing tattoo.

“Roses make a good cover-up because they have so many angles,” he said,

Cory Pierce, an artist at Flats Tattoo in Groton, also cited roses as a common cover-up because of the randomness of the shading. He said tattoos done at home are among the easiest to cover because home artists often don’t have professional equipment, so the tattoos start light and only get lighter with age. Many clients who come into the shop for a cover-up come with home-drawn tattoos.

In contrast, he said pieces that are deeper or have a lot of thick black shapes, long lines or lettering can be difficult to cover. Clients may also ask for a design that is too small to cover the original.

The point of a cover-up is to not look like one, Pierce said, and every one is different.

Any custom design requires time with the artist to bring a client’s idea to life, but cover-ups often require more planning to conceal the image underneath. Fish said his cover-ups take about a third more time than an original piece, and artists have to be careful not to go too deep with the ink or the surface of the skin will become textured.

Elyssa Dion, a tattoo artist at New London Ink, said she has had to make gray details of cover-up tattoos from white and black ink because using watered down black ink isn’t dark enough to cover what’s underneath. With one client, she had to tattoo over the existing design with white ink to lighten it enough for the new image, and another cover-up required several sessions to cover the underlying flowers with a dark winter scene.

“I think it took a year and a half to get it done,” she said. “We actually became best friends after because she was in there all the time getting it worked on.”

Over her four years at New London Ink, Dion has covered up tattoos ranging from a pair of sandals that looked like parts of the male anatomy to a fairy that she said looked like an artichoke. For full security that the old tattoo won’t show through, she recommended laser removal, especially for very dark tattoos.

Even cover-up tattoos need some help after a few years. Kat Ludwig of Uncasville came to Dion for a “rework” of an existing cover-up on her shoulder. Another artist had covered an old fairy tattoo she had gotten in Daytona in 1993 with peacock feathers. And a friend drew swirls around the feathers.

“Her face, from overexposure of the sun, exploded, and her face became black,” Ludwig said. “You could still tell it was a fairy, but she didn’t have a face anymore. Because those things are hard to fix, I had to get it covered up.”

After more than six hours of work, Dion was able to make the feathers opaque and transformed the swirls into a lace pattern, complete with an anchor as a memorial to Ludwig’s son. She said she plans to come back to have an original piece done to commemorate him.

a.hutchinson@theday.com