Alyssa's tattoo

cover-up tattoo

Jon just finished up the second session on this cover-up arm piece. But the kicker is, I took this photo and I had no idea it was a cover up until the customer reminded me. Sweet job.

good livin tattoo

A little shout out for Adam ... and a good example of Jon's script tattoos.

what your deposit gets

Jon has a ton of tattoos in progress. So rather than leave the blog stagnant, I thought I'd treat you all to a little preview ... sketchbook style. You see when a customer pays the $40 deposit they not only get to reserve their appointment time with Jon. They also get a bonified, customized tattoo drawn up just for them. We believe tattoos are personal. Who wants a piece of flash that means nothing on their body forever? Not me! So sketches are done to make sure everyone is on the same page BEFORE it becomes permanent.

So here's the preview of some recent work ...

another carburetor tattoo

Our friend, Ryan, came back to the shop yesterday to fill his other forearm with more carburetor diagrams. Looks good!

new tattoos

We've got some fresh ink flowing out of the tattoo shop. This week, Jon did this rib tattoo of the serenity prayer. (What's with all the rib tattoos? Don't you guy realize they seriously hurt!) He also took an existing cross on a woman's forearm and added a whole ton of interest to the piece. And these are just two of this week's projects! Man, it's been busy.

family ankle tattoo

hip tattoo :: flower & script

Jon just finished this tattoo yesterday. This was her first tattoo, high up on her hip. Congratulations on your new ink!

forearm tattoo

Jon just (I mean like just five minutes ago) finished up this forearm piece on a customer. The guy got it to remind him of the date he quit smoking. Keep going man. I hope looking down at the tattoo helps give you motivation.

pops tattoo

new school tattoo

Jon just did this new school style tattoo today.

more fun from the tattoo show

As promised, here are some more pictures from the Vegas tattoo show. We went entirely as spectators, so we got to just wander around and enjoy the talent on display. My favorite tattoo artists were the guys from Exclusive Ink out of Salinas, CA. They did my wrist tattoo and this crazy portrait of Chuck Norris on the first day.


Our pals Tara and Chad were falling over themselves for the guys from Lowrider. It's easy to see why with the crazy black and gray portraits they were doing.

And Jon ... He practically wet himself when he saw Mike Devries and Nikko, the guy who did the colored portrait on Kat in an episode of LA Ink.

tattoo sleeve

We wanted to share an update on one of our work-in-progress tattoos. This is a full sleeve Jon is putting on our buddy Kyle. He brought in a Sailor Jerry shirt for the inspiration. Jon turned the shirt into a really cool sleeve design.

portrait of grandpa

Jon made me add a disclaimer to this post. He didn't want to have the picture up because, "it doesn't do the tattoo justice." I love the tattoo and I'm the wife, so I win.

But I will add this, the picture DOES NOT do the tattoo justice. Since an arm is a curved surface, it foreshortened the tattoo when we took a picture. Most notably, this made the nose look off from the reference picture. It's not. The tattoo is dead on to the picture, but we do the best we can to document his work short of going house to house dragging our customer by the arm :)

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Saturday, Jon did this tattoo on a guy from Williston. He brought us a portrait of his grandpa. A tribute to a grandparent is always near and dear to our hearts. After all, Emma is named after Jon's grandma and her middle name, Lynn, was my grandfather's name.

ryan's tattoo

We had a great time this weekend hanging out with our friends Ryan and Sandi. These are two of the funniest and coolest people I know. So it is no wonder that when Ryan asked for Jon to give him a tattoo Ryan picked something totally random ... and totally awesome!

Enter Ryan's forearm carburetor diagram. How great is this!!!

steer head :: tattoo

Jon had a busy week tattooing. We had many great pieces come out of the shop. One of my favorites was this steer head tattoo.

phoenix tattoo

Jon just finished this phoenix tattoo Monday. The piece was completed in two sessions. I just love how the color turned out in the tattoo. It pops!

ankle rosary

Chuck :: Tattoo

One of Jon's latest projects was this back piece. The tattoo had to be completed over three sessions. We are very happy with the shading across the piece. It has healed very consistently from side-to-side, something that is harder to accomplish when you're doing multiple sessions.