Cosmetic Tattooing: A Guide To Choosing Your Artist

Choosing your cosmetic tattooing artist is just like choosing a heart surgeon – it’s important to get it right. While it may not be a matter of life or death, it is a matter of ‘damn I look great!’ or ‘what have I done to my face?’. Here are a few tips and tricks to ensuring you choose the right artist for the job.

Experience

The best indicator of a great tattooing artist is their resume. Just like with any procedure, you don’t want anyone ‘practicing’ a semi-permanent treatment on your face, you want an artist working their magic. For that reason, you should conduct a quick experience audit on any tattooist you’re considering. Head to their website—does it list their credentials? I put mine on show in the About section of my website. Listing over 30 years of brow experience for me is less about parading my qualifications and more so about bestowing confidence onto my clients. I want them to know I’ll give them their perfect brows, lips or eyeliner.

Reputation

Just like with any product or service, word of mouth is often the most honest and trustworthy form of review. You can figure out pretty quickly if an artist has been ruffling feathers in the industry with a quick Google search. Simply plug their name and business into the search bar and it’ll pretty quickly churn out any red flags. Also run your eye over their Google, Facebook and Yelp reviews to make sure there’s a general consensus in level of service. For me, the customer comes second only to the brow artistry itself. Every person who steps into my room is treated like a coffee date with a friend, and you’ll often walk out knowing far more about me than you expected to. And this, along with my attention to detail, is something that constantly comes up in reviews.

Salon & Equipment

No matter how good an artist’s brows are, if their salon is in poor nick—GET THE HECK OUT. Cosmetic procedures like microblading require extremely sterile environments in order to avoid any treatment complications. If you walk into a business to find the tattooing bed in the middle of a hair salon, that’s an immediate red flag because you’re exposed to all sorts of sprays and other nasties. If the tattooist is not wearing gloves when they begin the treatment, that’s another red flag. And if the technician doesn’t wash and sterilise their tools? Turn around and RUN.

Stencils

Particularly with brow tattooing, one of the biggest indicators of a sloppy or inexperienced artist is a stencil. If at any point during your initial consultation or appointment, the artist applies a stencil to your brows – or, God forbid, says they need to shave your brows to apply a stencil – hot foot it out of there! One of the first (and most important) things you’ll learn as a brow technician is that every pair of brows is different. The length, style, thickness and strokes of each of my clients is different, which is why I customise each of these factors uniquely to them. This ensures their brows look beautiful, but most importantly natural. If someone’s simply applying the same stencil to every set of brows they service, there’s a good chance you’ll walk out of there with rogue caterpillars.

Colour & Stroke Matching

This red flag is in the same vein as stencils. If you sit down with a technician who doesn’t spend the time to carefully customise your unique brow design or if they use the same pigment colour for every client, then you need to run for the hills before hundreds of your hard-earned dollars go down the proverbial gurgler.

Consultations

Just like when you’re in the market for a new car, you want to test-drive the vehicle before you sign on the dotted line. And so, when you’re in the market for some cosmetic tattooing, you want to meet the person who’s going to give them to you and ensure you’re getting the best service possible. By not offering a consultation prior to your treatment, the artist is not ensuring you 100% know what you’re getting into. That’s why I offer every single one of my clients a $50 obligation-free consultation. After a chat with me, you’ll leave with all the information you need to take that next step towards beautiful brows, lips or eyeliner.

Just like with any procedure associated with your body, you want to be 100% confident you’re putting it in the most competent hands. And if you want those hands to have over twelve years of tattooing experience and thirty years in the beauty industry, then book an obligation-free appointment with me right now to get that beautiful ball rolling.