Hooray!

Our How to Stick and Poke Tattoo video reached 1/2 Million viewers recently! We strive to educate people on how to do DIY tattooing at home in the safest way possible. History teaches us that “folks are gunna poke.” Through sharing info, we can decrease bacterial infection, decrease spread of disease, and increase empowerment in one’s own body!

We have many videos on many subjects around home tattooing, hand-poking, stick and poking and are working on a few more now. Follow us on YouTube and Instagram to get the latest info.

To view our videos on our site, click on a video comment below. To view on our youtube channel, click here.

We put out a call to our community on social media to share about their pandemic home tattoo experience.  COVID has caused sheltering in place and a rise in at-home activities such stick and poke tattooing. Our sales went WAY up. We were the topic of a VICE article, NEW YORK TIMES article and the Calvary Times! (The Calvary times was great, tbh). Many new artists emerged from the “stay at home” orders implemented around the globe. Here are some pictures and words from a few new hand-poke artists:

Shar, who is @offgridink on Instagram said that our kit made them “fall in love with tattooing” –

which is the sweetest compliment to the kit. Here is more from them:

“I started stick and poke tattooing out of necessity when I moved far out of the city and couldn’t make the trip often for new tattoos. I was also living somewhere very rural […]

Tann (they/them) is the creator of Ink the Diaspora, a platform that is for visibility of brown & dark skin folks who struggle to find representation for tattoos. Based in New York, Tann finds a great interest as their job as tattoo consultant. The interest is so great that they start to learn to tattoo themselves. Learn about Tann starting their journey as a stick and poke artist. Learn about different ink colors on different skin tones. How undertones play a role in tattoo color visibility and how color swatches can help. Tann plans to offer simple color swatches for folks with dark skin to assist them and artists in creating large colorful pieces.

Read more about Tann on our blog.

Pictured supplies are available in our DIY hand poke tattoo kit – check us out.

Our Instructional Videos:

+ How to Stick and poke tattoo

+ […]

Amazon (also, Whole Foods) –  First, they bullied the cute book stores out of our towns, and now they threaten to monopolize and automate online commerce and health food industry into a profit machine for a few executives at the expense of all tax payers.

As a former seller on Amazon, I have my own personal experience on how they “prioritize” the buyers at the expense of the sellers – often small businesses like my own. They force lowering prices (sales) and allow fake trademark violators to sell alongside you. Birkenstock took their products off Amazon for this reason and I have followed suit. I have experienced a loss of sales since leaving Amazon, and it has been difficult to leave as a buyer…that Amazon Prime can be soooo good and easy.

In turning to these alternatives (below) for my personal and business shopping, I have made a commitment to the striking […]

It’s finally time for us to roll out our series of home tattoo instructions! Stick and poke can be done safely at home – our kits (since 2013) have shown that to be true. Watch our lovely actors in Oakland and San Francisco, California educate you about some important tattoo topics.

Supplies in the videos are in our harm reduction product.

Below are two videos: How to use a tattoo stencil and how to safely remove gloves!

We will be posting many more videos this week including:

+ How to Stick and poke tattoo
+ How to care for your new tattoo
+ Tattoo safety
+ How to remove gloves
+ How to use a tattoo stencil
+ Why do you stick and poke? We interview our actors.
+ Stick and poke Tattoo Inks
+ All about tattoo needles