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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Todd Reid took Anita Buist to get her first tattoo when she was 16 and he was a slightly older mechanic working in Edmonton, in 1982.

Anita Buist, left, holds up the design of the Christmas tattoo being applied by Moltens Tattoos owner and artist Todd Reid. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

Buist had moved to Canada from England three years before and didn't have many friends, just a couple of uncles and cousins.

"I met him the night before," said Buist, speaking from the waiting room of Reid's shop, Moltens Tattoos, on 47 Street. "I thought he was really good-looking. I was a teenager and I asked him what he was doing the next day. He was getting a tattoo of a dragon on his upper left arm coloured. And I said, 'Hey, I was going for a tattoo, too. Let's do it together.'"

"She was trying to pick me up," said Reid of the night before, eliciting wild laughter from Buist. "She was hot. We were young."

Together they went to a parlour named Pegasus. "I don't even know if it exists anymore," said Buist.

Her first tattoo was a bluebird with a rose in its mouth - "in my bikini line where my parents would never see it." (Not for five years anyway, in the case of her mother. Dad remained oblivious until two years ago.)

Twenty-five years later - during which Reid and Buist broke up, dated others and reconnected 10 years ago - Buist looked to Reid for company again as she got another tattoo. But this time was entirely different.

On Wednesday, over the course of two hours, Todd, a tattoo artist of 27 years, carefully applied a tattoo of a snow globe to Anita's upper back. At the base of the snowglobe, Reid etched a banner reading "Dad and Mom."

"It's a gift from Todd," said Buist of the tattoo. "I always wanted a Mom and Dad tattoo. My dad's birthday is on Christmas Day. He'll be celebrating it with the rest of the family in England. So that's why it says 'Dad and Mom' instead of 'Mom and Dad.'"

She originally wanted to get the tattoo last Christmas, but it didn't work out - ultimately for the better, said Buist.

"It's my Dad's 65th birthday this year," she said.

"He always gets ripped off for his birthday because it's Christmas," joked Reid.

"We don't forget, but he seems to get brushed over," admitted Buist.

Floating at the top of the snowglobe is a yellow ribbon - the most important part of the tattoo, said Buist.

"That's for my niece," she said. "She's been missing since March 2007."

Candace Amanda Shpeley, a 24-year-old mother of three kids, went missing on March 31 after failing to pick up her kids in Abbotsford, B.C. She was last seen by her brother, Steven, who had lunch with her at an A&W Restaurant in Chilliwack. Her car was found abandoned a week later in Vancouver. She hasn't been heard of since.

"It's hard to hold it together. I was particularly close to Candace," said Buist.

Reid said that despite the added emotional weight of the tattoo, the application of it was like any other in his career - until he added the ribbon.

"That turned emotional," he said.

When Reid's job was over, after two hours of Buist leaning her head forward, taking a break here and there to stretch, Buist got her first look at the finished tattoo.

"As soon as she saw it, she said, 'I love it.'" said Reid. "That's the big payoff - when people look in the mirror and love it so much.

Last year, when Buist first thought of the tattoo, "I was hoping I could get to kick (Candace's) ass and then get a cover-up when she came home. But that hasn't happened yet."

For her, the tattoo symbolizes "hope - and the waiting for her to get home."