Quote - quote :

 I'd figured out the holygrail of shader'ings: laying a color'ed tattoo over a skin texture. Now I cant recall how I set it up

Something like this ?

http://www.superheroinecentral.com/mrx/xpage/decaltutorial/decaltutorial.htm

Look down the page for the tattoo part.

Yeah! This'll work! I'd been using MathNodes, myself but I think I'l give this other method a try! Good looking out DarthJ!

And here's the crazy thing. JUST before I read your reply I figured out how to layer the tattoo over Miki3's skin texture! C'est la vie, right? ! LOL But I like this other method of using a tiny decal instead of a full-size overlay decal. It's a lot more responsible to work with tiny images, if possible, to keep down the size of product files for customers.