A small crowd erupted with cheers as the winner of the “Worst Tattoo” contest at the Seattle Tattoo Expo this past week unzipped his pants and revealed a squirrel on his inner thigh, accompanied by the words “Mmm nuts.”

Thousands of others, just as proud of their artwork as winner Donald Atkin, attended the expo at Seattle Center this past weekend, which featured tattoo artists and vendors from locations as far-reaching as New York and Hawaii.

Tattoo guns buzzed all throughout the center, where many artists set up fully functioning tattoo stations.

“We’re doing everything here that we do at the shop,” said Anthony Mason, who does body piercings at Deep Roots Tattoo and Body Piercing, located on the Ave.

Jason Gellerstedt, 35, nearly covered from head to toe in tattoos, had a “disemboweled zombie chick” done on the back of his thigh during the expo.

“I’m into the dark stuff,” Gellerstedt said. “I love the shock value of it all.”

He began his tattoo at about 1 p.m. Saturday and expected to be done at around 10 that evening.

When the time came to judge who had the worst tattoo, competitors included a man with a faint heart and a dagger on his calf done by an artist at the Yakima County Jail, an individual with a macaroni noodle on his leg tattooed using cheese sauce for ink, and someone with the word “fiend” misspelled in large letters across his stomach.

The victorious Atkin said that he was intoxicated when he did the squirrel tattoo himself.

“I bought a tattoo gun and thought it’d be funny to do it,” Atkin said. “When I woke up the next morning, I thought, ‘This is going to be a great story.’”

He won a gift certificate toward the laser removal of his “worst tattoo,” but gave the prize away.

“I don’t want to get rid of it,” Atkin said. “It’s hilarious.”

Other event-goers were more subtle in their appreciation for tattoos. A man in his 40s got his first tattoo three years ago, but with only one tattoo on his bicep exposed, no one would guess that his back is fully covered in black-and-white portrait-style tattoos inspired by 1930s movies.

“He doesn’t even look like he’d have tattoos,” said Chris Adams from Photo-Modern, a photography company that does custom design tattoo portfolios.

The man’s tattoos are featured in one of Photo-Modern’s portfolio books, and he entered them in the expo’s “Best Portrait” contest.

This year, the expo brought together a wide range of people to share their tattoos in a stigma-free environment.

“[Tattoos] can be really liberating and personal, but they’re not for everyone,” Mason said. “I like that [the expo] is a constant collaboration of people.”

Reach contributing writer Shauna Nuckles at arts@dailyuw.com.