“Topper Tats,” has been a weekly way for Hilltop Views to tell students’ stories through their tattoos since fall 2011. For those who have been wondering, the girl who started it does have a tattoo of her own.

Brooke Blanton was a freshman when she first came up with the idea with a friend and pitched it to the Hilltop Views staff. She profiled students and their tattoos in “Topper Tats” nearly every week for the rest of that school year.

Now a senior, Blanton’s Topper Tat-writing days are over, but sometimes she will recognize people on campus by their tattoos.

“I will walk around campus and think: Owl! Flower! Indian chief!'” 

Blanton said that Topper Tats started because everyone and every tattoo has a story.

“Even if you just got drunk one night and got it for fun — that’s still a story even if it’s not meaningful,” Blanton said.

Blanton went to get her own tattoo three days after her 18th birthday with her two best friends, her older sisters Danielle and Julianne. The three sisters each got one section of the phrase “Live well. Laugh often. Love much.”

Also engraved on a plaque in their family home in Boerne, Texas, it was their mother’s favorite saying. She died when Brooke was 14.

Their tattoos “bring us all four back together,” Brooke said.  

It wasn’t intentional, but Blanton said that each of their tattoos “fits their personality to a tee.”

Danielle, the sister with the “live well” words, lives at the beach and likes to travel, cook, and relax. 

Her sister Julianne on the other hand, is the embodiment of her tattoo’s words: “laugh often.” She is the sister who is always going to crack jokes and try to get others to smile, according to Brooke.

As for her own “Love much” tattoo, Blanton said she is “very much a lover, not a fighter — I do everything with my heart.”

The Blanton sisters were always close, but they’ve only grown closer since their fateful trip to a tattoo parlor in San Antonio four years ago to commemorate their mom and her favorite mantra.

Blanton lives with one sister and talks to the other on the phone almost every day. In Julianne’s upcoming December wedding, both Danielle and Brooke will be the maids of honor while their boyfriends will be the groomsmen.

Each of the sisters have individually contemplated the idea of a second tattoo of their own. Brooke said none of them have gone through with it because they each keep second-guessing the decision.

“It’s hard after not hesitating for a single second with the first one,” Brooke said.