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FAQ Tattoos | Envy Skin Gallery - Tattoo shop | Columbus Ohio

How much does a car cost? The question is too vague to answer. It depends on what you want to get done. The cost of a tattoo is related to how long the tattoo will take. 

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America, we're doing a series of FAQ questions for the website for you guys. So this is the first video. It's about how much do tattoos cost. It's a completely unanswerable question...we… It's like the most common question we get and it's extremely frustrating for us and it's extremely frustrating for you ‘cause you want to know "how much is a tattoo?"

Well, we don't know because we don't know what tattoo you want. It's a visual thing. You know, last night, my friend wanted me to quote him how much this would cost. Just out of my head how much is this gonna cost. I have no idea! It depends on what lettering you pick out, how big it is... I was seeing something totally different in my head and then, when we sat down to design it, it came out like this. You know what I mean, because he wanted the three important words to be bigger, then he started adding a scroll like… So if I were to try to give him a price yesterday, it would have been way off of what this actually is.

So if you're getting like... just getting piece work done, we do the design and then we can tell you how much it's going to be. If you're getting a huge, like sleeve or something where you're coming back repetitively, then we charge you by the hour. Everybody's different.

So I guess a good analogy that I've used over the years to… to kind of like let you understand what we're talking about… used cars for example. You’re asking a tattoo guy just vaguely how much does a tattoo cost is very similar to calling a car dealership and saying "How much is a car?” I mean, are we talking like for 350 duty or are we talking like a Chevy Cavalier? I don't know how much is a red car? How much… how long is a piece of string? No one knows… No one knows, America.

So I understand that it frustrates you, you know, you… you folks, especially first-timers who've never had a tattoo before, but it frustrates us as well because we want to help you but we can't and sometimes it's hard to get that across to people.

So how much does a tattoo cost? Here's the way I look at that: how much does it cost? I don't care, I want the best tattoo I can get. When I go get tattooed, it costs me a lot of money. I don't go down on Bethel road to Envy Skin Gallery and get some badass artist to hook me up. I have to travel - so I'm already paying 2 G's before I get tattooed. You know, I don't care, but I'm that way about everything. If I'm gonna go buy a new sofa, I'm gonna go buy a nice new sofa. I'm not gonna go buy a $300 sofa that’s gonna break in two months. I'm gonna go buy a nice piece of furniture that I'm gonna have for a couple years.

So, you know, it's up to the individual. There's plenty of places in town that are cheaper than us. But when you come here to get it fixed because it sucks, then you paid twice. So who's winning? Not you… um… I don't know, I hope, I hope that kind of explains it…

Anything else you can think of, Chase, to sum up the how much does a tattoo cost?

The best way to get a quote is to bring an example of what you’re talking about.

Yeah, yeah and that's a good point: the more examples of stuff you can bring us, we're gonna… we're gonna do our own thing with it anyway, we're gonna twist it, put our kind of thing on there, but whatever you can bring us to get us closer to the image in your head is gonna help immensely and get us really dialed in and that way, while you're here getting your consultation, we could probably shoot you a quote that will be close, maybe within fifty bucks or so probably. So do that, you know, it helps us out which helps you out in the long run and never hurts. America?

Tattoos can definitely be affected by stretch marks. Whether you will or won't get stretch marks is apparently determined genetically, so placement is a consideration if you are planning on getting pregnant.

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One of our big questions is: does weight gain affect your tattoo? They can, if you get a tattoo on your arm, not like a sleeve, but like a sticker tattoo and let's say you weigh a hundred pounds and then you gain four or five hundred pounds. So you have like that weird distorted thing of the skin thing whatever that weirdness is called, where everything is distorted, then yeah, that's going to affect your tattoo.

If you weigh 500 pounds and you lose three, is that going to affect your tattoo? Probably. Doesn't mean your tattoo will look bad. It might just shift on your body. It might be in a different place later because you lost some weight.

Another thing for women, but this isn't such a thing anymore but it used to be: getting little bikini area tattoos, get pregnant, get a stretch mark, you're fucked. There's no way to fix that cause it literally pulls the tattoo apart.

But as far as the weight gain issue, it's not really that big of a deal. I mean, it would have to be a massive amount of weight. I hope that answers your question. No, it won't affect it, it’s all I got to say.

What about working out?

Working out it's totally fine. Again, it would have to be a massive shift, you would have to be very thin and then get to a competitive bodybuilder size before anything weird would happen. But even at that point I don't think it would. I think it’d still be fine.

Nope. As long as you take care of it. We provide you with aftercare instructions before your tattoo and explain it after. 

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Will my tattoo get infected? I've been tattooing for 23 years, 24 years the summer. I have once in my lifetime seen a tattoo get infected. I was tattooing in Louisville, Kentucky. I tattooed this bro’ from Bradford Kentucky. Got tattooed that night, helped his buddy pull out a motor from his truck and put a new motor in the truck with his shirt off and his bandage on. Grease, dirty, grossest Kentucky fungus… that's probably a bad idea. If you take care of your tattoo, it's a series of small punctures, so it's really hard for a puncture to get infected unless it's like a rusty nail. We have surgical stainless steel needles that have been sterilized to death, never touched anything on earth except for you. There's no possible way you're going to get infected unless you go do something dumb. I had another guy who poured whiskey on his tattoos because he thought it'd make him heal better. I think that's just wasting whiskey.

But anyway, no, your tattoo is not going to get infected unless you do something extremely hazardous like working on your car with your shirt off for eight hours. So it's really hard to get a tattoo infected. You really have to do something bad to get it to do that, so the chances are so small. I've seen one person have an infected tattoo, but it wasn't actually the tattoo it was one of his hair follicles got infected and shaved like an ingrown hair. 

 

No. Our needles are single use and destroyed afterwards. Nobody has ever been tattooed with the needle before you. 

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Can I get can I get infectious diseases from tattoo needles? Yes, you can if you get tattooed at someone's house or in prison or your cousin Jeffrey who just got back from the State Penitentiary who learned how to make a tattoo machine out of an old VCR. He’s tattooing you with a guitar string.

You're probably going to get something, maybe hepatitis C.

The biggest worry is Hepatitis C, because it can live so long outside the body, it's like 90 days or something ridiculous, it can just be magically on something. You can't see it. You can't see hepatitis C. It can be on there you don't even know it. It gets wet, it comes back to life you touch your mucous membrane, you just got hepatitis C.

AIDS doesn't worry me. You have to have a lot of AIDS enter your system directly for you to get AIDS.

All the other ones are not that big a deal, they're not really transmitted that way, as far as sexual diseases.

There's other crazy shit like skin-eating bacteria, but if you’re coming to a reputable shop, you're not going to worry about that. It's just one of those things that 50 years ago was totally different, they didn't even change their needles so nowadays you're all good, America.

A new tattoo is an injury to your skin; it's like a scrape. Typically, when the artist finishes, they will cover the new tattoo with some sort of bandage, probably non-stick bandages. Some will use clear plastic sheet, like saran wrap. The bandage is largely to protect the tattoo and your clothes, since new tattoos ooze. Also note that tattoos will ooze ink along with the other fluids, and it is not unusual to find an imprint of your new tattoo on the inside of the bandage when you take it off.

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What should I expect with a new tattoo? There's a lot to expect.

Tattoos are cool, so just expect that your coolness level will go up immediately and also probably people will try to buy you drinks and give you handshakes and high-fives.

Okay, here's what I tell people: it takes about ten days to heal, seven to ten days depending on you and your diet and if you take vitamins or whatever. It's going to get a little scabby, little crusty if you don't take care of it too good. If it does, don't pick it, but if you take care of it properly, how we tell you to, it shouldn't even get scabby at all, it should be fine.

The first day it kind of feels… I don't even know how to describe it, it's kind of like a real bad sunburn just in one spot and it kind of feels that way for the next two or three days and then you basically forget it's there.

You can do all this normal stuff you do normally but if you start doing something that makes your tattoo hurt, use common sense, don't do it anymore. You can workout you can do whatever. You cannot submerge it in water, that's bad, so no swimming, no hot tubs, rivers, lakes or oceans.  It's pretty easy.

No, it will probably look bad. Your skins natural melatonin will alter the color of the ink because the ink is sitting under your skin. Some people are lucky and the white will stay white, but most of the time it will turn an ugly brown or grey. We would recommend a light brown hue. 

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Can I get a white ink tattoo? I don't know who started this trend, or if some celebrity got a white tattoo or something but I'd like to punch them in the face. Getting a white tattoo is the stupidest thing you can do. The pigment in your skin is darker than white.

So, here's what I have seen happen: you get a little white tattoo little tribal thing on your face or something you get in the sun, you get that sunburn and then the thing that actually gives pigment to your skin, reacts with the white ink and then you end up with a brown tattoo on your face or wherever.

Just because you’ve seen it on the Internet does not make it good. There's this thing called Photoshop that a lot of people like to use with their photos to make it look like their tattoo’s better than it really is. And you're seeing the tattoo the second that's finished, you're not seeing the tattoo two years later, are you?

Don't do it. We won't do it. We literally will not tattoo you with a white tattoo. We won't, we just won't do it because it's going to look like doodoo and then you're going to go around saying that we did it and we don't need that kind of bad publicity. And if you really need a white tattoo, you probably don't need a tattoo. You're probably trying to hide it from somebody or be “non-committal” about the whole tattoo thing that's really not what tattoos are about. Get a beautiful image that means something to you.

People want to know what a proper ID is in Columbus Ohio. A proper ID is a driver's license, a state issued ID or passport. That's it. We can't accept anything else. We don't take college IDs, we don't take your birth certificate, we don't take your Social Security card and we don't take military ID's.

We will tattoo anybody over 18 with a goverment issued ID. Though it's not illegal to tattoo minors in the state of Ohio, we perfer not to.  

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How old do you have to be to get a tattoo? I don't think there's an actual state law on that one, but here at Envy Skin Gallery you have to be 18 years old.

But what if I'm 16 and my mom comes and signs for it? What if I’m 17 and my dad comes over? I don't care if Jesus Christ comes out of heaven with Buddha and Krishna and they all three asked me to do a tattoo on you and you're under 18. Not going to do it.

It's our moral and ethical code at Envy Skin Gallery so we do not tattoo anyone under the age of 18. Sorry if that's bad news for you and you're trying to get one anyway, but we just don't do it because I personally don't think that you need tattoo under 18. So, sorry. Come in on your 18th birthday though, we'll hook you up, and we'll give you some free stuff.

Anything you can think of!

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This question would be what colors do you have? What colors don't we have? We have every color there is. We start out with the primary colors and then we can blend whatever we need for whatever tattoo we're doing. You'll notice that a lot of artists have this very specialized palette that they have chosen or developed over the years. I know I do. I really don't have that many colors when you look at them individually. But when I'm tattooing, I can, you know, if I want to get like a nice weird green color like an olive drab green, I have some yellow and I'll dip that into black real quick, get like a nice olive drab green. If I want like a really nice brick red, I'll hit my red and then I'll hit like a really dark green.

We, as an artist, should – tattoo guys out there – we should all understand color theory I would think.

So basically anything that you bring to us we're going to be able to mimic.

There are limitations because, obviously, depending on your skin tone, the pink that we show you in the bottle and the pink that's actually going to be on your skin, you know, your skin tone is going to have an effect on that, so sometimes it can dull down the colors, other times it can brighten the colors. But that's just part of getting tattooed. So what colors do we have? We have all the colors. We got all the things you need.

The answer is yes. Having needles pierce your skin hurts. The proper question is 'How much does it hurt, and can I handle it?' It's not nearly as bad as what you might imagine. The pain comes from the cluster of needles on the tattooing machine piercing your skin rapidly. This sensation, however, doesn't feel like the pain of an injection - it's more of a constant vibration. You will be amazed at how quickly your body releases endorphins, which dulls the pain significantly. The pain will vary depending where on your body you get tattooed. Skin right above bones tend to be more painful than other areas. In addition, certain types of needles seem to hurt more than others.

NOTE: Do not drink alcohol or take drugs for pain relief purposes prior to your tattoo session(s). Both aspirin and alcohol thin blood and promote excessive bleeding. Aspirin also decreases the clotting of blood, which will slow down healing.

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All right, frequently asked questions, America. Do tattoos hurt? Really? Yeah, yeah it hurts, it hurts, but "hurt" is like one of the most vague words in the English Dictionary. It's like love. Love is a very big word. I love Chase. Not in love with Chase. I'm in love with this water right now cuz I'm thirsty, I'm not gonna make love to it. You know I mean, hurt it's a very vague word: it hurts when you stub your toe, it hurts when you get hit by a car, it hurts when you get bit by a shark, which one do you want? I want to stub my toe… we can just say.. It’s needles going into your skin, not very far, not like an IV needle, not like giving blood needle, not like getting a shot needle. It's barely breaking the skin just enough to get that ink under there.

I don't know, I hear people describe it in different ways. The best way I can describe what a tattoo feels like: to me, it almost feels like a tiny little electric shock. You know those little nine volt square batteries that you put in your guitar so you can have your tuner work or what… do people even use those anymore?

Smoke detector.

Are we the only ones that use them?

No. Smoke detector, your smoke detector 9-volt battery. Get a brand new one from Duracell, stick it to your tongue. That's what I think, not as intense though, that's what I think a tattoo kind of feels like.

Whatever, it hurts but you know what, it doesn't hurt that bad like I've never had anybody cry or anything so, you know, it's a tolerable pain and it's only happening for 10 or 15 seconds at a time and then we have to stop and get more ink do whatever. So it's totally tolerable. Most people don't really complain about it. We joke around and laugh while they're getting tattoos. So yes it hurts, but hurt’s are very loose word. I hope that answered your questions if not just stop on it.

Yes we do!

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Frequently asked questions. I’ve just looked at the light and now I see like this big ring of light.

Do you cover up / touch-up tattoos? Yes, we do. Being that we live in the Midwest and there's a lot of people who try to tattoo out of their houses and people get crappy tattoos, we end up doing a lot of touchups and cover-ups. I would like to think that we're extremely good at doing cover-ups and touch-ups.

You know, if you have a tattoo that you like, you probably got it the first time because you like the idea, maybe they just did a really bad job. Sometimes we can turn it around make it good.

Sometimes it's too far gone and we got to cover it up.

When you're getting a cover-up, it's a good idea to come to us with some ideas. I always tell people: make a list, write down ten things, don't think about the cover-up part of it, just think about, if I was going to get a tattoo, what would it be? Write down ten things. Usually, from that list we can take one of those things and actually do your cover up and make a tattoo out of it.

If not, it gives us a better understanding of the things you like, which makes it easier for us to sort of know what direction you want to go with your tattoo and then we can make suggestions that might work that you might like, instead of us saying you know a thousand different things that you might not like, that we just picked because they'd be easier to cover it up.

But anyway, make the list, contact us, then we can hook you up and make it awesome.