A freehand tattoo means that the stencil is drawn directly on your skin rather than drawn on paper, put through a stencil machine, and then transferred to your skin. These are quite often done with sharpies or special stencil markers; not literally freehanding with a machine. This process can look a little odd if you’re […]
Category: For The Tattoo Newbie
Weekly informative posts about how the industry works and how you should behave as a client
Open vs Closed Books (and Respecting Artists Time)
In the tattoo industry, every artist does things differently. Especially with booking appointments. There are 2 types of bookings that we see: open books and closed books. Open bookings are when you can book at any time for a future date. Closed books are when an artist will only accept appointment bookings within a short […]
Is It Going To Hurt?
As tattooists and people who work in the industry one question we hear a lot is, is it going to hurt? Usually from people who are getting their first tattoo. There’s nothing wrong with this question. It’s totally valid to want to know what you’re getting yourself into and you want to make sure you […]
Flash Tattoos
How it works today Flash tattoos are a staple in the tattoo industry. They can be used in various ways and are the gift that keeps on giving. Flash tattoos, or flash, as it’s more commonly known are pre drawn designs that are available to be sold as tattoos. Different shops have different flash policies […]
The Problem With Micro Tattoos
As I’ve mentioned in a few past articles we define the success of a tattoo on how it looks in 5 years, not when it’s first done. Making sure it is still clear and defined 5 years down the road is really the end goal. One way or another the ink will last a lifetime, […]
Surgery, Scarring and Tattoos
Luckily when I broke my wrist early December and went through a surgery I didn’t have anything done that affected my tattoos but it’s certainly not unheard of. Lots of people go through things in life like a surgery where the tattoo may have become deformed but hope is not lost. Of course your options […]
Cover Ups
I already did a post on reworks, if you’d like specific info on reworks check out that post, but coverups are their own thing in a lot of ways. Cover ups (and reworks in this case) always require an in person consult, if a client lives out of town we can sometimes do video consults. We […]
Why You Should Research Your Artist
This post just focuses on why it’s important to research your artist’s art style, if you’re interested in researching if a shop is safe checkout my other post: How to spot a reputable tattoo shop. This week I wanted to do training wheels on why it’s important to research your artist before choosing, I think […]
How to Spot a Safe Tattoo Shop
With tattooing becoming more and more mainstream there are a lot of shops out there; some with ethics and high quality tattoo work, others not so much. So how do you tell? We talk a lot about reputable tattoo shops in our industry but what does this actually mean. Business certificates are a great way […]
An Open Letter to Minors and Parents
Dear minors and parents, I thought that an open letter would be a good way to address this issue of tattooing minors. We are all entitled to our opinion and by the end of this you may conclude that we are just off our rocker and that is ok! But with a lot of teens […]