hello 2026
it’s 2026. Holy shit.
I’m 30, married, a homeowner, the studio is turning SIX. 2025 was not at all how I imagined it. I wrote 2025 down in my planner like I do at the end and beginning of every year (I’m one of those people), and as usual, things played out COMPLETELY differently than how I wrote them down. My world never stopped spinning and I am definitely not complaining. But I’ve paused for a second to look around and let everything sink in.
Planning essentials: pokemon rom, cat hair, clefable, and my modular planner, aka, my 3rd arm
Mystique and a mando (he removed his helmet, let me save him from exile). finally got married on PAPER on halloween 2025 and then ate my wedding ring(pop)
But on to the serious stuff.
In 2025, I watched an upsetting amount of tattooers quit and shops close up. The economy slowly, then rapidly went after us one by one, myself included..it was NOT an easy year. Now in 2026, sadly nothing has drastically improved but, nevertheless, I’m motivated and hopeful and feeling refreshed like I do every time the world gets a year older.
So with the whirlwind of 2025 behind us and the uncertainty of 2026 ahead, I’m ready to rip the bandaid and start over. New website, new schedule, new everything. As many of you probably already saw, I’m also so incredibly tired of social media. At least in the current model we know it as. I want to like it and I want to use it, but it’s come at such a great cost to my mental health, productivity and overall happiness, it’s time to say goodbye. My instagram will still remain up and active and you WILL see me post pictures and some updates there. However, I won’t be present like before. It’s off of my phone, meaning it’s no longer at my fingertips, just ready to suck me into the vortex (I lack the discipline and attention to resist it, so we do what we gotta do). But the great news, is I feel I am now more reachable than I was before, I strongly believe that. With instagram, I feel so far away in a really depressing and lonely way when we’re supposedly meant to be more connected than ever. That has not been my recent experience and many of my peers have expressed the same feelings. And I’m just itching for that, to feel connected again. So with my new website, as I navigate and troubleshoot this whole new set up, my goal is provide a place to reach me more easily, directly and to feel less cluttered. Just ask me your questions, make your appointments, see some cool stuff I’m up to, and feel like a person. I want you to like it here. I feel so strongly about that sentiment in my studio, so why shouldn’t I feel that way about the digital space I’ve created to share with you? I want you to like both places. I will be honest up front here, that I am definitely making this up as I go along, and there will undoubtedly be hiccups for me to correct and revise along the way as things start moving, but I will earnestly work out the kinks as I go and hope you enjoy your time here with me. I just want to make cool tattoos, art, music, etc. and all the things that have felt so far away the last few years while I’ve been trying to “keep up” with everyone. It’s silly.
So back to the basics. Just good tattoos and art…and obligatory shenanigans because I cannot help myself.
This blog section will have a few main purposes. Number one being, important booking updates, like availability, closures, guest spotting, travel dates, cancellations, events, etc. Another purpose being updates in the studio. I always have a ton of ideas floating around in my head and I’d like to bring some of those ideas to life this year and will be posting about them here. And anything else in between!
I will link the new booking page here so you can take a look around. My tattoo days will remain the same for the time being: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. I will continue to use a booking form for custom tattoo designs, as this method has been the most efficient for me to gather your ideas and put custom pieces together. I have updated to the booking form to be better and more straightforward than before, always aiming to make it better and better whenever a growth spurt happens. However, I’ve implemented a new feature for flash pieces where you can skip the middle man and go straight to booking. Since this is new, I will watch how this goes closely to make sure it’s the right fit for all of us and troubleshoot as we go along. But as I get better and more practice in running the show, I’ve learned that I HAVE to do things the way they work for me because that is the ONLY WAY they will also work for you. If I do things the way “this tattooer” and “that tattooer” does it simply because that’s the way they do it, I will truly fail disastrously since I am not them and they are not me, so together, we will make this work and everything will be fine! And of course, I will approach every situation with discretion and make exceptions when I feel necessary.
New booking form:
So with that, I bid goodbye to 2025, and hello 2026!
-Emily
