5 Takeaways: The New York Tattoo Show

One year ago, I met Lou Rubino, a really nice New Yorker and Big Boss of World Famous.  He invited me to New York to check out his highly renowned tattoo show and check out what the World Famous brand was all about.  The show was so awesome that I returned again this year.

To say I was floored and extremely impressed with the artists, their passion, and the World Famous Inks themselves would be an understatement. Not to mention, the high importance their team put on family, working together, and absolutely no judgment or drama was extremely impressive.

World Famous has over 300 colors including many Artist Series Collections

Mad skills by @tattoo_suvorov

At first, coming into the world of tattooing was a little bit intimidating, after all, permanent makeup has always been the neglected younger sibling of the tattooing world. But I have to say that the World Famous family has been extremely supportive of me, the art of permanent makeup, my colleagues, and for that, I am SO grateful.

So let’s get right down to it with my top Takeaways from the 2018 NO Limits International Tattoo Expo:

PMU Sisters & Colleagues: I am SO proud and excited for all of my PMU sisters and brothers that were able to make it to the show this year. Last year, there was a very small PMU presence and this year was so exciting and humbling to see so many of my colleagues coming out and exploring the world of tattooing and learning from so many talented artists, supporting my vision and looking toward body art for inspiration and artistic expression to guide us and our work!

 

Showing Terry Lively the Tina Davies x Permablend Line

PMU Artists Who Came to Visit Our Booth: One of the best things about going to these shows is the opportunity to meet our customers and other artists we work to create meaningful education for! I am so grateful to have my team working hard to communicate and support our customers and other fellow artists, but to have the opportunity to meet them myself, in person and hear their questions, concerns, and experience their support firsthand, is an opportunity I don’t get very often, and don’t take for granted! Without you there would be no us, so thank you!

With Amie Conners and her daughter, Kat Webster

Seminar: Sharing my knowledge with this community is one of the many joys I’ve had in my career. Being able to help you elevate your skills by sharing my past experiences to shorten your learning curve and help you to create beautiful work is something I absolutely love doing. My Blade & Shade seminar and Live Demonstration was slotted to last 2 hours, but ended up going for 4! To be able to teach and educate artists who took the time out of their busy schedules to make themselves better artists was incredible, each and every one of you were so attentive and ready to learn, I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to share my passion and knowledge with.

Everyone showed up early and stayed late

Tattoo Community Support: When I first entered the world of tattooing last year, I was a little bit intimidated. I knew that in the past, PMU was looked upon by traditional tattoo artists as a joke. Tattoo artists apprentice and train for many long years, and entry into the craft is much more stringent than PMU. Thanks to Lou and the World Famous team, the two worlds are beginning to merge in the best possible way, and we’ve all been given the opportunity to learn from each other! I have so much respect for tattoo artists and their process, dedication, knowledge, and beautiful art. I truly felt that the tattoo artists at the show had a mutual respect and welcomed me and my colleagues into their community as if we were all just artists with one common goal of creating amazing work for our clients. At the end of the day, we can learn so much from tattoo artists and I encourage any artists to look to them as a source of knowledge and guidance for working with skin, equipment, techniques, color theory, and so much more!  

Best Traditional Tattoo by @TattooYue0928

Pigment Line Announcement: Last but not least, we announced our much-anticipated eyebrow pigment collaboration with the World Famous family and their Permablend line!

When I and many of my close colleagues quietly started using Permablend about two years ago, I knew without a doubt that I was on to something special as I started seeing around 90% retention (regardless of skin type) in my clients after the first appointment.  I had never witnessed so much consistent retention EVER in my 17 years of tattooing. I was used to colors fading off 30%-40% after the first treatment and was used having to do a touchup after a few months to intensify the results. I was literally wasting 1-2 hours at each touchup to put back what faded away.  

Now after careful testing on my clients along with collaborating with my closest PMU colleagues, I’ve carefully formulated a 6-color line that will heal perfect, every single time.  The formulations heal true to color on the rich, warmer side (NO more grey ashy brows) and perhaps the most exciting thing is that you will never have to modify or mix pigments yourself again! This exciting range of colors are all premixed you will find a perfect color for your client within these six shades.  It’s simple, easy, and best of all, only $20 for ½ bottle. 

 

It was so exciting for me to finally be able to have this line available for other PMU artists try and actually tattoo with at not only my booth, but their own booths as well, so look out for reviews by artists coming soon. We are so excited for the official launch of this line in the upcoming months and can not wait to share it with you.

My mission since launching my very first microblade and opening up about information in this industry has always been artist-driven. We are making history as we speak to elevate your skill and make you, the artist shine your brightest! Until next time.

-Tina