Category: Tattoos

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It’s never over: apprentice Trixie Luni and her mentor MVDV share their views on tattooing

Our contributor Sarah Kay learns about the relationship between mentor and apprentice…

Five years ago, tired of expensive rents and constant noise, delayed trains and endless commutes, I decided to move to a small village in the Upper Normandy region of France where neighbours all know each other and the cheese is definitely better than what I could experience elsewhere. Sure, it was a terrible decision as I travel a lot and was further away from airports, but I had an amazing bakery, a great apartment – then last year, something happened: a tattoo shop opened. Curious, I went in in the first days. Located two doors away from me, I had never seen a tattoo shop that far away from the big cities that had, according to their page, a serious quality to them.

I had just returned from NYC and asked MVDV, whom I barely knew at the time, to tattoo a slice of blueberry pie on me. His enthusiasm and really funny disposition made me immediately at ease, and the result is incredible. Having them as neighbours, I had the opportunity to know them better – and to continue booking appointments even as borders remain closed due to COVID-19. It’s an incredible luxury. I took time out of the apprentice, Trixie Lunie’s busy day to ask her questions about the tattoo world and her decision to enter it, and asked her mentor, MVDV, how he sees it. The keyword? Humility. 

TRIXIE

How long have you been an apprentice for now? A little over nine months.

How many tattoos have you done on actual people, including yourself? Over thirty I think on people, and five on myself.

How long have you wanted to be a tattoo artist for? For about 10 years. It wasn’t always possible, since a tattoo apprenticeship is unpaid, but now I can do it because I have a partner supporting me and after having worked for many years before I’m entitled to unemployment benefits.

Were you drawing before or were enrolled into any form of art curriculum? No, I’m an autodidact. I’ve been drawing since I was capable of holding a pencil though, I had been watching my dad tattoo – he was a tattooer himself. He was more of a scratcher: he would tattoo from home, mostly his friends, local people, I still got to take a look at how he worked, and we would attend conventions together. As clients, not professionals! (laughs)  Let it be clear that I’m not into his style, but he never was told or taught how, never had a strong foundation, and that’s what I wanted and needed. I wanted a reputable studio where I would be shown and told strictly what to do and how to learn to be the best tattooer I can be.

How long did it take for you to find an apprenticeship? A long time!  It’s really hard. There are a lot of requests and very few spots. It took me about a year to find this one. I found them through social media, I liked the work being performed, people seemed satisfied; I just didn’t want to go just by reputation. A reputation can take ages to be formed, but it can fall apart so quickly. I wanted something solid.  Now I truly believe I have what I wanted, with a great mentor.

So who is your mentor? Is it Casper (the owner) or MVDV (the tattooer)? Casper is my Jedi Master, and I am MVDV’s padawan. We’ve only known each other since February!  It’s going very well. I’m learning a lot, because my preference is manga and anime, and he works mostly in realism, so that was definitely a learning curve. He’s making me draw a lot, I’m starting to tattoo on fake skin, and he’s always behind me, telling me what I can improve. He gauges when I’m ready to do something, which may not always be when I feel ready. They’re making me draw some flash sheets right now so I can get used to creating designs.

I saw that you posted on your Instagram about the tattoo me too situation. How do you feel about that and how do you see your place as a young female up and coming artist? I know that in this studio I will never face any form of discrimination whatsoever. I think elsewhere however, womxn can be under-respected because they are still believed to only be there to draw cutesy hearts or butterflies; I follow a lot of female artists that do, and do so in very different styles and who completely own it. And there’s nothing wrong with being girly. Womxn can be good at everything. There’s enough room for everybody now, and now there are conventions for female tattoo artists too, so I’m entering the business at the right time. A few years ago, it may have been different.

Who is inspiring you right now? Charline Puth, who has a private studio in Paris, I’m getting tattooed at Getcha Club by Charlotte E San in Lille. I love all this Japanese inspired art world. At the end of the day though, we’re all here to do the best job possible for the client and their idea of the design, so as Casper told me when I started, we need to be able to do everything. Of course I’d like to specialise in manga-inspired work and work on really colourful designs, and there is an audience for that, but I must be capable of performing in any style as well. 

When it comes to the tattooer-client relationship, what are the values that you hope to bring to the table as a solo artist? What matters to me is to have a very clean shop, that is inviting, really abide by strict rules of surgical hygiene with the equipment, and look my best as well, so people can trust me. Then I want to establish a friendly atmosphere, regardless of the mood I’m in, just like in any other workplace, a lot of humour so people can feel comfortable, and be really respectful of their bodies and of their boundaries. 

How do you deal with someone who is anxious – because it’s their first tattoo, a sensitive body part, because of the pain, how do you put them at ease? You talk to them a lot, you offer them a cup of coffee, you ask them if they had something to eat, you take your time. You make sure to have a lot of time so the person can take as many breaks as they need to, I know MVDV is really cautious on the first lines to see how the person reacts and how he can talk them through what’s happening. 

Do you think it’s a possibility that a womxn would enter the shop and would rather have you tattoo her than MVDV? That’s a total possibility. It depends on the body part. I would do it, if this is a person that would rather have a womxn do it, especially with everything that’s going on. With MVDV though, he’s been working with some sensitive body parts as well and everything went smoothly; that’s his job, he’s used to it, he knows how to work it, and he would never post insensitive photos on Instagram afterwards, you see.

Do you think it’s harder to be a female apprentice with a male mentor? You need to have a strong personality in this business anyway, because there are stupid people everywhere.  You need to stand your ground and go for it once you found the place where you’re comfortable.

About competition? Of course there’s a lot of competition, but as I said there is room for everyone and everyone can carve their own space.

How do you see your future in this shop? I’ll be 80 and still tattooing on fake skin. (laughs) 

Your biggest fear right now about tattooing someone? I recently tattooed one of my good friends and she was really stressed out and it was contagious, but I managed to keep a steady hand and I had really prepared for it. 

This fear that you’re permanently altering someone’s body and you’re afraid to screw up, that never fully goes away, right? No, it doesn’t.  With experience, you gain perspective. A tattooer will always have something to learn. If someone goes ahead and tells you they have nothing left to learn and know everything, I don’t think they got the point. They no longer evolve. Techniques change. Methods change. Equipment changes. Designs change.

Now that tattooing has become so prevalent in the last decade, you see “tattoo schools” pop up, and people entering the fold with art degrees. What do you think about it and how it changes the nature of tattooing? I believe in apprenticeships, but it would be helpful if it had a real legal status. We deal with it, and I do, but it would be great if it could be recognised as an apprenticeship just like any other profession. As for art, you may be a brilliant artist, that still won’t make you a good tattoo artist. Those are two different things. Nothing can replace a solid apprenticeship.

How long do you think your apprenticeship will last? My whole life! After a year and a half I think I will have a good foundation. Just the foundation. But I wouldn’t be a good artist then. I am going to start tattooing soon, because it comes with practice. The shop remains small and approachable, even though we’re starting to be booked quite solidly, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. My two masters are extremely good, we have a great working relationship and they tell me if anything is wrong. They explain to me how to place order, how to manipulate equipment, hygiene requirements, but this is not a shop where they will only have me serve coffee and sweep up for a year, you know? They’re making me draw and work on fake skin every day.

A last word on womxn in the industry? That female tattoo artists are just as qualified as a male one, that some can run circles around others, that we’re not here to be a punchline. Things are changing really fast, hopefully for the better. And there also should be no objectification of heavily tattooed womxn either!

MVDV

How long have you been tattooing for? It’s been nine years. Very happy with my evolution – I’m learning more about the craft every day. I was just doing my thing for five years and now I’m officially set up in a shop for four.

And now that you’re an apprentice’s mentor, how do you feel about it? It feels really strange because I don’t feel like I am in a position to be a mentor. I don’t feel I have what it takes yet to be a mentor.  I don’t feel any seniority.

So how does the dynamic work? I can give her tips and pointers based on what I am capable of doing, but I still feel like mentorship has to be earned and being a mentor is something that carries with it a lot of responsibility. No one is really a mentor as we all learn something new every day. To be a mentor, for me, is the end-all-be-all of the work, it’s being in such a strong position of authority in the history of tattooing.

What has been the most challenging piece for you so far? It was a realistic lion that I just did this week! And it has taught me a lot about what I can do and how to best approach it. 

How do you see Trixie debuting in this industry once her apprenticeship will be complete? I’m not necessarily apprehensive, but just like I did have, it necessitates a lot of rigor and a lot of perseverance to make it. For those of us who had to learn everything on the go, it’s even harder, so it requires a lot of personal commitment.

What does it mean to you to train a new female artist? There are so many womxn out there who are doing such an amazing job, discrimination makes absolutely no sense.  Womxn have their place in this industry the way they do everywhere else. 

What do you think of this reckoning right now in the tattoo industry about sexual misconduct? Those are horrible people who would be horrible in any other job as well but abusing their position. We are in a profession where the human body is literally our canvas, our workplace, so men who are unable to behave with respect in this job have absolutely no place here.

Do you feel a specific type of responsibility when you tattoo a sensitive body part? A place that she wouldn’t like, but she wants to look at and see something beautiful instead? It’s the case for everyone, I feel, that they come to tattooing to change the way their body is before, and turn it into art. And it’s entirely my responsibility to do the best possible job I can so they can look at it years onwards and still love it. It’s true that if they’re having a difficult time because of body image, we have the opportunity to work with the client to make something really significant.  Any art you work on is for life, and you have a duty as an artist to make it as perfect as possible. There’s no way to half-ass it. Whether it’s your specialty or not, if you accept to do it, the responsibility is there. I think about this all the time: it’s permanent body altering.

And that’s really something you want to transmit to your apprentice. Yes: the love of working with people, the love to create; and to me this is when you know someone is really into tattooing and has the potential to be a really good tattooer, it’s when they take pleasure in the challenge of creating something special. Going to work is not a chore. The tattooer-client relationship is an exceptional one. And being talented is something you have to constantly perfect, constantly improve.

The piece that makes you the most proud? I recently worked on a UFO, and I really loved it. I had added it to a flash sheet and I never thought someone would pick it; it’s something that is really dear to me, UFO and aliens, and that was really just something that came out of my head. This person really crushed on it and loved it, and I was just so happy to be able to do that piece. I thought it would be a little too “out there” for people, and no, it found its client!  And that was wonderful for me.

What’s the future like for you? I’m not worried about clients coming in, but I know I have to keep on learning, evolving, meeting new people, working on my craft, because you can become irrelevant real quick, there are new people coming out every day who just blow everything out the water. That’s something I learned immediately, so I’m just really looking forward to being in a job where I have to keep on learning every day. And if I can travel with this, learning other techniques, histories, legacies, that would be ideal. I had no mentor personally – when I arrived at Casper’s, they showed me the technical aspect of this, how to pose a stencil, how  to best see a placement, and for that I’ll forever be grateful. But I don’t consider myself “arrived” or anything like that. I have a team that is family for me, and being a little orphan boy, having found them matters so much to me.

Both Trixie and MVDV are working at Casper S.O. Ink, Chaumont en Vexin, France.

Sarah Kay is a very, very tattooed international human rights lawyer living between Paris and New York. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, Sarah has kept its taste for cold rain and the rewards that come from sitting still under pressure. You’ll probably find her in London drinking wine.

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Kiwi and the Bear

Hayley, the Kiwi in Derby-based Kiwi and the Bear, chatted to us about running a “weird little colourful indie biz” with husband, Aaron (Bear). K&TB started as a hobby back in 2015, they now sell art prints, reusable face pads, scrunchies, pin pennants and more…

I’ve always been a craft lover and loved trying new things until something finally stuck which turned out to be tie-dye. After I spent a couple of months tie-dying everything in sight, I wanted to take it a step further by adding artwork to the dyed fabric, so I taught myself to hand embroider. What followed was a wall full of embroidery hoops containing tie-dye and 2005 emo lyrics with a little bit of Taylor Swift thrown in, somehow that Taylor Swift hoop made its way onto Buzzfeed and shortly after onto her legal team so that hoop was swiftly retired.

Around this time we invested in an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil, this right here was the game changing moment for me, I just didn’t know it yet. I started to drift over onto a blank canvas and began playing around with little doodles and eventually adding more art to my lettering which, was weird for me as drawing just wasn’t something I ever did – like, at all. 

I didn’t study art, I didn’t consider myself artistic – crafty yes but artsy not at all. At this point I had been following tattoo artists and illustrators on IG that I found so much inspiration in and it had never occurred to me that I could add my voice via my own artwork to the community. I was so nervous about putting my illustrations out into the world, I thought people would think it was a joke.

It was discovering the incredible creative community on IG that taught me art was whatever I wanted it to be and it could mean whatever I wanted it to mean to me, and suddenly I was free to just create. I was having the most fun and finally felt that feeling of being somewhere you were supposed to be the whole time.

So in 2018 we decided to take Kiwi and the Bear a little more seriously, we wanted it to feel more like a brand, something that really reflected who we are – a couple of weirdos trying to live life a little more positively while still remaining sarcastic and foul mouthed. We just wanted a space where we could really just be our obnoxious selves!

We made a few of my illustrations available to buy as prints alongside the embroidery hoops and it felt liberating, so new, so scary, but so exciting! We started developing more products using our hand dyed fabric, purely for selfish reasons as we were making things that we wanted in our own home. It’s selfish but it’s also the best way to find ‘your people’, those that love the same things as you, customers and friends and even better sometimes both!

Our new products and new direction came at the perfect time for us as I had to take a step back from hand embroidery due to my chronic illness making it near impossible to carry on. I’ve had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis since I was seven, two hip replacements and two shoulder replacements later, what hasn’t been replaced is painful and awkward and waiting to be replaced!

I dislocated my thumb while drying my hair, that’s all it took, they couldn’t get it back into place in A&E and soon after, I saw a specialist that showed me my x-ray, and explained that I actually had five chronic dislocations. I’d just learned to live with them. When you’ve been disabled since you were a kid you become really adaptable especially when you’re a stubborn Taurus, so when someone tells you that you can’t do something because of your disability you find ways around it. I couldn’t physically carry on with the hand embroidery, I was grateful we’d discovered things like our pennants and illustrations, so removing the hoops didn’t have to be the end for us, if anything it felt like the start of a new chapter and I found a way to keep drawing and making even with the dislocations.

When people realise I make and create what I do with my sad little hands they often don’t believe it, but for me it’s the most natural thing to keep going, stay positive and stay medicated. Plus, having a high pain threshold really helps. It also helps with really long tattoo sessions, I think nearly every tattoo artist I’ve spent time with has said that I sit like a rock, I mean come on I have to look for the positives in this disease right?

Positivity is a huge part of what we’re about as a brand, it’s strange to say as two emo kids in their 30s who almost always opt for black everything, but somewhere around my 30th birthday I wanted to be kinder to myself. Every day is a battle for my body so I really wanted to focus on the positive things, however small. It was around this time that I fell in love with colour which was super out of character for me, as the only place I ever had colour was my pink hair, but suddenly I was wearing bright fun dungarees and I realised I could be a colorful emo. I found my sweet spot and I’ve stayed here ever since.

It was around my 30th birthday that I received one of my favourite tattoos, it was a real life changing moment for me, like real-life movie montage material of me coming out the other side a bad ass b!

For the longest time I had left gaps on my body that I was too afraid to get out in a tattoo studio, something switched in me when I turned 30, I learnt to love my body no matter what size it was, I learnt to separate the disease I hated from the body that housed it.

I made a tattoo appointment with Mike Love to get my first hand poke tattoo on my sternum, I was really, really testing my limits and I loved it. This piece is so important to me, it marks the beginning of a new era for myself, I faced my fears and got ‘1989’ hand poked into a space I never thought I’d be able to get tattooed, yes it’s my year of birth (I’m a proud 80s baby if only just clinging on to the very end of the 80s) but it’s also a nod to my favourite Swift album, and this one her legal team can’t take away.

We have been a couple since I was 16 and Aaron was 17, so the longest stretch of our tattoo journeys do end up intertwining at times. We have a few “couple tattoos”, for instance he has “Player 1’ on his inner wrist and I have “Player 2”. We’re huge nerds and play video games together any chance we get, and after 15 years together it feels pretty safe to include our story on each other’s bodies. We do have plans for a couple of matching pieces that relate to our favourite Walt Disney World adventures together. During our trip last Halloween I got to show Ariel my Ariel piece and Aaron got to show Mary Poppins his bag and umbrella piece by Lady Chappell Tattoos, yeah we’re those kinda nerds too, and it was so freaking magical!

The one thing I’ll always thank younger me for was being obsessed with filling my arms leaving my legs bare for when I was more educated about the industry. So my legs are home to my most favourite pieces that I’ve collected through my 20s, my absolute favourite is my Rachel Baldwin piece.

Tattoos have 100% had an effect on my relationship with my body, I began getting tattooed when I was underage (I know, I know!) I think as a sick kid this was to have some control over my body when I felt I had none.

Eventually getting grew into a way to love my body, my body art plays a huge part in my body confidence and I’m finally at a point of accepting that I’m like a colourful weird little marshmallow and proud.

Occasionally someone will ask why I describe myself as a marshmallow, it’s actually a kind of sneaky way to refer to myself as chubby (also fluffy, plump and pink it’s the actual food version of me). I don’t use it to replace chubby because I’m ashamed, because I’m not, it’s been a really long journey to dig who I am. I use it because when you refer to yourself as chubby or fat in a positive way, you’ll more than likely experience someone with good intentions trying to tell you you’re not fat. Most people have received an “omg you’re not fat babe” once in their chubby and proud lives, some people can’t see it as anything but a negative, so it’s easier for me to refer to myself as a “leel marshmallow” so I just get to live my fat and proud life. Also marshmallows are pretty dang cute and if just makes someone think of something pink and chubby well, duh, hello!

We have a lot of plans for the future of Kiwi and the Bear, firstly nap with the pups, then celebrate our 15 year anniversary that we worked through, AND then we want to keep adding new illustrations to the shop. We will still take commissions (hand lettering, illustration, custom dyed pennants) most things in the shop you can make a custom request on. I hope to be lucky enough to carry on doing freelance illustration for companies with the same values as us.

The biggest plan we have is to make a zine about being chronically ill which we started working on before everything was flipped upside down. There’s also talk about possibly releasing our first ever pin, which makes sense with our ever growing collection. Really we just aim to keep being a part of the community that we love and making the things we love while making new friends.

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Apprentice love: Carlotta Quast

When we first saw Carlotta Quast’s patternwork when scrolling through Instagram we were blown away by her immense talent! Once we learnt she was an apprenticeship we knew we had to know…

I started my apprenticeship in September 2018 at Sorry Mom Tattoo Studio in Brunswick, Germany. I’d just quit studying architecture and the shop owners, whom I already knew through my partner Nick, who’s also a tattooer at the shop, asked if I could help out around the shop a couple of days a week. Whilst doing that I started to really get into books dealing with ethnic, tribal and ornamental tattooing styles.A few months later they offered me an apprenticeship.

I’ve always been drawn to tattoos, and I wanted to be heavily tattooed since I was about 14 years old. I managed to wait and I got my first tattoo when I was 18. It was a fairly typical first tattoo – I got a word on my ribs.

Luckily the tattooer who did it, who happens to be my partner today, introduced me to American traditional tattooing which is the style most of my tattoos are in today. My favourite tattoo is probably the sacred heart on my shin. 

At the moment I pretty much just do ornamental tattoos. It’s definitely the drawing style that I connect with most. My drawings have more of an architectural mathematical approach. My absolute favourite tattoo style today is different types of tribal. I hope that one day I will have done enough research to feel comfortable enough to offer tribal mix tattoos as well.

The best part of my apprenticeship is the progress I see when I look back. I’ve already come a long way dealing with the feeling of not being good enough and impostor syndrome. But I’m glad I’ve stuck with it and always had such supportive people around me.

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“What’s fir ye will no go by ye”: Hannah Danana

Hannah Danana is a tattoo apprentice at Liquorice Tattoo in Kirriemuir, Scotland, who just so happens to be transgender with an active GoFundMe campaign. Here Hannah shares her story about what’s meant to happen for you will happen (the meaning of the quote above lovingly taken from her granny)…

I have had an infinity towards tattooing since, at least, my early teens, having always been intrigued by the culture and history surrounding it. I never necessarily saw myself becoming a tattoo artist, despite studying art, but it’s something I’ve been around for most of my adult life and just seemed like a natural fit. I’ve been apprenticing for two years now, going into my third.

I had always known in subtle ways that my body didn’t line up with my gender and that I was “different” but after years of depression and battling with (what I didn’t know at the time was) dysphoria I realised that I was in fact trans. And so for the sake of my wellbeing and mental health and with love and support from my amazing wife,  I transitioned. I started in my mid 20s (I’m now 30) before I had begun my apprenticeship. So coming into, what was and still can be predominately a boy’s club, as a transwoman was fairly intimidating. 

After a couple of false starts in other studios I found my home at Liquorice Tattoo. Which is an inclusive all female studio. They were massively accepting of me and my journey and gave me a safe space to learn and hone the craft. 

Since I started working and learning at Liquorice Tattoo early in my transition I have still been continuing my journey “on the job” as it were, through the NHS. Now, the NHS is and can be, wonderful. But it’s not without its troubles and lengthy waiting lists. Currently the NHS gender clinics in the UK are experiencing massive amounts of patient intakes and because of such, are experiencing unprecedented waiting lists. Which unfortunately means that trans, non-binary and other gender nonconforming people like myself are waiting months, if not years, for their initial appointments never mind starting actual treatment.

Thankfully aside from my lengthy waits with the NHS they have been really good in dealing with me and my transition. But like I said, the NHS is not without its pitfalls and funding being a large issue means that not all treatments available to trans people are deemed “essential”. In my case that was breast augmentation and facial feminisation surgery. 

Now, gender dysphoria can be a fickle beast and usually when you tackle one area of distress, another that was lurking in the background becomes far more prominent. The most important part of my transition at first for me was gender confirmation surgery (for anyone unaware of what that is or may entail, I’ll leave it up to them to Google and research.)

After having that surgery (which I am forever grateful to the NHS and the wonderful team at Nuffield Brighton) and eliminating the largest source of gender dysphoria for me, other areas of my dysphoria started to rear their ugly head. And no matter how you try to think your way around it, these features that may or may not be noticeable to others, become all encompassing parts of your body image.

No matter how many times someone comforts you that nobody sees what you see, you’ll never truly be comfortable in your skin until it’s dealt with. 

That’s why I started my gofundme campaign. So I could afford the surgeries that the NHS could not offer me and finally feel truly comfortable in myself which I believe everyone has a right to! While the total cost of these surgeries is around the £18,000 mark, I am not trying to raise the full amount (which would be nice). But mostly to soften the blow for any kind of loan that I will likely need to take out to cover them. Without the gofundme campaign it would be years before I could afford them and those who suffer from severe depression know that years are not necessarily guaranteed. One particularly dark period could be the one. But that’s another conversation in and of itself. 

Thank you so much to anyone that has shared or donated to the campaign. I am endlessly grateful to all of you. 

And to anyone within the LGBT community that aspires to work in the tattoo industry but is too intimidated or scared by its reputation of being un-inclusive or a “boy’s club”. Go for it! Just go ahead and take the plunge. Because for every studio that might turn you away for being an LGBT apprentice there is another, safe, accepting studio waiting with open arms. 

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Interview with YouTuber Lauren Petrie

30-year-old Lauren Petrie (also known as ‘Treacle Tatts’) is a popular YouTuber and social media personality who started her YouTube career in 2014 and has since amassed an 100k following. Her videos almost completely revolve around tattoos and she frequently addresses injustice in the tattoo community to raise awareness and help educate her viewers. I had a chance to speak with Lauren recently about her YouTube career, her tattoo collection and how she has been handling the covid-19 lockdown…

Tell us a bit about why you started your YouTube channel. There’s a few reasons why I started my channel! One is I studied media in college, and I loved video editing and I wanted to get back into video editing again. I thought making Youtube videos would be a great way to do that but had no idea what kind of videos to make. I definitely don’t have the best makeup, gaming or cooking skills so all of those were out of the question when it came to making content so I thought I’d make videos on tattoos.

To start off with it was more so to see if people related to stuff I had gone through as a tattooed person as at the time there was no tattooed people in my life. I then thought “hey use your experiences to help people when it comes to tattoos” as I didn’t start off getting the best tattoos and slowly learned how amazing and artistic tattoos could be! I then continued making videos on my experiences and giving advice on how to get good tattoos!

How has YouTube affected your life? It’s given me the freedom to be my own boss and work when I want and talk about stuff, I’m super passionate about! I managed to turn my hobby into my job and I got to quit my retail job to do it full time! It’s an absolute pleasure to do and will be forever thankful that I get to do it!

What do you enjoy the most about being a YouTuber? Being able to connect with people who have the same interests as me! Talking to fellow people who get super excited about an upcoming tattoo appointment and the such! Its also learning about other people’s experiences when it comes to getting tattooed and who they are as people! I just find other tattooed people fascinating! I make some videos that involve my subscribers and they are from all walks of life from lawyers, to grandparents, to chefs, to students, retail workers I mean the list can go on!

I love to share people’s backgrounds to prove that tattoos aren’t just for celebrities or criminals like some people like to think!

What first attracted you to the world of tattoos? I can’t pinpoint an exact moment because even as a child I loved them! I’d always cover myself in temporary tattoos! I’d be that weird kid that stared at tattooed people in a store and not because I thought they were weird but because I thought they were the coolest person on the planet! None of my family have tattoos so I never grew up around them so maybe that peaked my interest even more! 

Can you tell us about your tattoo collection? Do you have a favourite tattoo? My tattoo collection is a huge mish mash of styles and colours. Some are personal or custom drawn and some are just flash drawn pieces from some of my favourite artists! I like symmetry and organising by colour. So my left arm is colour traditional and then my right arm is a black work blast over (still in progress) then my left leg is black work and my right leg is colour. I just thought it would be a fun way to style my tattoos. 

It’s so hard to pick a favourite tattoo but at the moment I’d have to say it’s my black work peony neck tattoo by Heidi Furey! I spent a couple of years really deciding if I wanted to be very visibly tattooed and I finally went for it and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made! 

We love your outfit posts on Instagram! How would you describe your style? Ow thank you!! My fashion is all over the place to be honest one day I’ll be wearing loud plaid trousers and the next I’ll be wearing all black and studded stuff but one thing I continuously wear I guess is oversized printed tees! I can’t get enough of them! Most of them are tattoo art inspired because why stop at getting just tattoos when you can have the art style on a t-shirt!

How have you been coping with the covid-19 lockdown? I’m very much an introvert so staying in didn’t really affect me much at first. I did start to get restless here and there as time went on! I really missed my best friend Yasmin and our little restaurant and cinema dates! Before lockdown we would go to the cinema and out to eat at least once a week! 

Do you have any future tattoo plans now that a lot of tattoo shops have reopened? Yes! I have an appointment to do more work on my black work blast over arm! I also want to finally get my knees tattooed! I’ve been putting them off for years as the thought of getting major bony areas tattooed grosses me out – I hate the feeling!

Do you have any upcoming projects or plans for your channel or new merchandise you would like to tell us about? I don’t have anything major in the works at the moment I kind of just make content when I come up with the ideas or if something major happens with in the tattoo world like the recent sexual assault allegations I like to make content on that so more awareness is made!

At the moment I’m trying to create more awareness for black and POC in the tattoo industry! There’s a lack of representation so I want to use my platform to celebrate POC tattoo artists and those that tattoo on darker skin tones! As for merch, I think I want to start getting my artistic subscribers involved and commission some fab art from them to use on merch! 

Words: Lucy Edwards, a 20-year-old tattooed university student, cat mum and trying-new-things enthusiast. You’ll most likely find Lucy posting about mental health awareness and self-acceptance on her Instagram.