Tattoo Care

Tattoo Care - Before

2 Weeks Before

Gently exfoliate the area of skin that's going to be tattooed 2-3 times a week. This is not 100% necessary, but it makes my job easier (which makes your tattoo go faster, which saves you money and some pain!)

I no longer recommend numbing cream (see Pain Management section below). If you still choose to use a numbing cream, however, do a test patch. Let's make absolutely sure that you won't have a bad reaction before we use it on a tattoo.

24 Hours Before

Halt any cannabis consumption if it is accessible for you to abstain. Regardless of how often or how much you generally consume, having any cannabis shortly before a tattoo significantly increases the likelihood that you will have involuntary twitches and muscle spasms, and also tends to make folks more sensitive to tattoo pain.

Try and get a good night's sleep. Quality sleep can help improve your pain tolerance!

The Day Of Your Tattoo

Stay hydrated! Drink lots of water.

Eat a really solid, filling meal before your appointment. Getting tattooed on an empty stomach is not fun. Eating prior to your tattoo will increase your pain tolerance and reduce any chances of a sudden drop in blood sugar or passing out. A high-fat, low-carb meal seems to work best, but really... just get some food in ya.

I no longer recommend numbing creams (see Pain Management section below) but if you choose to use a numbing cream, apply it to the area being tattooed about 1-2 hours before your appointment. Generally, you want to lay down a thick layer of the product and immediately place some plastic wrap over it. Keep the plastic wrap there, and I'll remove it when we get started -- the plastic wrap helps your skin absorb the product and prevents it from evaporating too fast.

Tattoo Care - After

Pre-care | After-care | Pain Management

First 3-5 Days

Keep your saniderm on. It's a "set it and forget it" kind of deal. It's going to fill up with some fluid (blood, plasma, excess ink, etc) and it's gonna look gross. That's totally normal, though!

Do not pop or drain the saniderm bandage. The bandage is sealing your tattoo in an as-sterile-as-possible environment. If you puncture this seal, bacteria will have the opportunity to get in and get trapped under the bandage with your very vulnerable tattoo -- which is obviously no good!

If the bandage leaks on its own, remove it immediately. For the same reason, if it leaks on its own you want to remove the bandage right away. If you were given an extra piece of saniderm, place it on the tattoo after rinsing it with water and patting dry.

Showering is fine, but avoid extended exposure to water such as baths or swimming. The bandage is waterproof but water can break down the adhesive along the edges, causing it to come off too early.

If I covered your tattoo with an absorbent pad bandage instead of saniderm, leave this on overnight before removing it. After removing the pad bandage, gently clean your tattoo with a mild soap, rinse with clean water, and pat dry with a paper towel. Apply the piece of saniderm you were given by removing the paper backing and placing it over the tattoo as centered as possible. Remove the plastic grid film on top. Leave the saniderm on for 3-5 days.

After 3-5 Days

Remove the saniderm gently. Ideally, do this in the shower. The saniderm adhesive is extremely strong, so removing it gently is important to avoid making your skin super irritated.

Wash with clean hands and a gentle soap. Ideally, your soap won't have a lot of extra nonsense in it like fragrances or dyes -- these can irritate your tattoo and delay healing. Pat dry with either a paper towel or a pristinely clean cloth towel.

Moisturize with a thin layer of lotion as often as you need to -- if your tattoo feels itchy, dry, tight, or looks flaky, it needs more moisturizer! I highly recommend the aftercare lotion sold by After Inked (also sold in the shop), or simple lotions sold by brands like Cerave or Cetaphil.

Don't use petroleum products (vaseline, Aquaphor, A+D ointment, etc) or oils (coconut oil, shea butter, etc). While these products work well for skin in general, they aren't the best choices for a healing tattoo. The skin of a healing tattoo is constantly losing a lot of moisture, and these products only serve to contain whatever moisture the skin still has. A good moisturizer will not only prevent further drying but will rehydrate the skin, too.

Don't go swimming. Whether it's a swimming pool, the ocean, a lake... there's a whole lot of bacteria in that water and your tattoo is still an open wound.

For the next few weeks

The scabs that formed over your tattoo will start to slowly break off in pieces. This is normal. Although it may look like your tattoo is falling out, it's not!

Don't scratch or pick at it! We want these scabs to fall off as gradually and naturally as possible. In some cases, picking at a scab can actually pull some of the tattoo pigment out of your skin! If it gets itchy, try slapping it. Yeah, it's weird... but it works.

Keep moisturizing the tattoo until it has more-or-less the same texture as the un-tattooed skin around it.

After about a month or so…

Your tattoo should be pretty much healed. Hooray!

Wear sunscreen whenever your tattoo is exposed to sunlight or UV light. Your tattoo will stay looking fresh MUCH longer if you limit sun exposure and are religiously applying sunscreen.

Reach out to me if you think it needs a touch up. A touch up is included in the cost of your tattoo so if something doesn't look quite right when the healing is finished, we'll get it taken care of.

Over the Years…

The lines will thicken and blur as the tattoo ages. Nearby skin cells will, over time, gradually carry away and breakdown ink particles from their initial position when they were tattooed. You can slow down this process with sunscreen use.

Your tattoo may, every once in a while, become raised and/or itchy. This is especially common in people with compromised immune systems or taking certain medications and can happen years after a tattoo was done. Anything that triggers an immune response in your body (e.g. getting sick, seasonal allergies, chronic illnesses, certain medications) has a chance to also re-trigger the body's reaction to your tattoo as a foreign substance in your skin. When this occurs it's generally nothing more than a mild annoyance and is not an allergic reaction.

Pre-care | After-care | Pain Management

Pain Management

Tattoos hurt. There's no way around it. But there's a few things you can do to make it suck less.

Is this your first tattoo? If so, don't sweat it.

Most clients get pretty anxious anticipating the pain and then it ends up being much less of a problem than expected. It's difficult to describe tattoo pain because it's such a unique sensation, but a pretty close one would be that it feels like a cat's claws scratching at a bad sunburn. Not pleasant, but not unbearable.

Abstain from cannabis consumption for at least 24 hours before your tattoo,

if that is something medically accessible for you to do. Cannabis (regardless of quantity or frequency of consumption) makes you much more likely to twitch and have involuntary muscle spasms during tattooing and can also cause you to be more sensitive to the pain. You can resume consumption after the tattoo is done.

Certain placements on the body are notoriously more painful

(e.g. elbow ditch, back of knees, ankles) because there's less muscle/fat padding, the skin is thinner, and/or there's a lot of nerves running through that body part. 

The best thing you can do in preparation for a tattoo is to eat a filling meal and stay hydrated.

Research shows that eating significantly increases one's pain tolerance, especially if the meal is high in fat and low in carbs.

There are topical numbing products available, but I do not recommend them.

While it doesn’t happen with every tattoo, I and many other artists have found that numbing creams more often than not cause tattoos to heal poorly — colors heal muddy instead of vibrant, color saturation is lost, and lines blur out as though they’re already several years old. Additionally, many of these products have questionable or unregulated ingredients, putting their safety into question. For these reasons, I will not provide a free touch-up if you choose to accept the risk and use a numbing cream for your tattoo.

Just calm down, and don't think about the pain.

I know, I know. This one sounds useless, because of course that's easier said than done. But still, taking time to ease any anxieties will help you handle the pain better.

  • Focus on your breathing, and put all your energy into keeping your breath even and regulated.​

  • Bring headphones to listen to calming music, a good audiobook, or whatever helps settle your mind.

  • Stay distracted. Lots of people find that talking helps distract from the pain.

  • I keep an assortment of stress balls and fidget toys in my workstation for clients to borrow.

Don’t take too many breaks

I want you to take as many breaks as you need to, but taking too many can actually make the situation more unbearable. Your brain will produce endorphins in response to pain which helps you tolerate the tattooing process. When you take a break, the brain stops producing as many endorphins because the tattooing pain has stopped. When we resume tattooing, the brain starts producing endorphins again. Taking too frequent breaks will put your brain and nervous system through a roller coaster of increasing and decreasing hormones, so you want to avoid that additional stress on your body.