like that, but more swirly?

yet another bit of tattoo shop etiquette for my readers here:

reference pictures are your friend. no, really – they are.

it’s not uncommon for somebody to, after long debates, figure out what they want for a tattoo and then find an image, or multiple images, that reflect their plans from google. they bring in, say four printouts of various angels – in tattoo, graphic design, and “photo” form…and proceed to talk about how they like this pose, but this face, with these wings, and more like this one’s background, and we make it happen.

it’s also not uncommon for people to do all of the above steps only to forget the pic(s) at home, and then they marvel at how quickly we search google and find what they found in a fraction of the time.

again, it’s what we do.

but if it’s something terribly personal, like a picture of a loved one or, in the case of sunday night, your kid’s FUCKING THUMBPRINT you should wait, go back home, and get the real deal. except she didn’t even have it there – she was afraid that coating her little girls hand in black ink and trying to get prints would freak the kid out. really? that little action, by her loving parent, would freak her out? how fragile do you think your kid is? and if they really ARE that fragile, how do you think she’ll survive in the real world?

just a thought.

but there she was – and she had a plan. a plan well thought out, and done with a mother’s logic…and clearly not the logic of somebody who knows how tattoo shops and skin work. she wanted her little girl’s thumbprint, doubled over itself to form a heart:

but she wanted it TO SCALE for the size it is currently, at age five. she also wanted the artist to age progress it, size-wise, to what it would look like at age ten AND age fifteen, and come up with a design where all three of said hearts would flow together, but she only wanted to get the five one sunday night and get the others done as the child hit those ages. and on top of that, she didn’t even have the thumbprint, but said “she could describe it” and that she didn’t want some generic google image of one (like what i pulled above), but rather what it ACTUALLY was, based on her description…apparently she thought we were “tattoos, piercings, and forensics”.

but we didn’t turn her away. the artist (a friend of mine) actually gave it a shot…and when it started to come together, she was given a price ($250) and flipped, saying she wouldn’t pay that much.

and that was that.

her friends were saying things like “they just overpriced it so you’d walk away”, or “well, i got this one done in arkansas, and it was that much but it’s much larger, so you’re getting ripped off”. while at the counter. then they went elsewhere in the shop and sulked for a while…and after that level of rudeness and unprofessionalism (yes, believe it or not, i expect customers to act like professionals, too) i’ll be surprised if she even gets a handshake from us going forward.