Important things to note during healing:

• Do not expose your tattoo to the sun for long periods of time, doing this can blister your tattoo.

• Do not let any animal hair get into your tattoo, animal hair harbours a lot of bacteria and can lead to an infection.

• Do not soak your tattoo in the bath or sauna, and do not swim for 14 days or until the tattoo has fully healed. The only water that should touch your tattoo is clean, running water from a tap or shower.

• Only ever touch your tattoo with clean hands, make sure the clothes you are wearing are clean and if any dust, dirt or hair somehow gets on your tattoo wash it immediately.

• Only dry your tattoo with tissue paper designed for tattoos or kitchen tissue paper that doesn't leave little bits of paper or fibres behind. 

• Do not scratch at your tattoo or pick at the scabs, this will pull ink out, prolong healing time and open your tattoo to infection. 

• Some redness, soreness and heat from the tattoo is normal, if this doesn't improve within a few days or gets worse with time, seek medical help. If you get a fever, nausea, loss of appetite, or yellow, cloudy liquid with a foul odour coming from the tattoo site, seek medical help. Infection is extremely rare but it is always good to remember the symptoms.

• Here is a really good resource explaining the whole healing process as well as what to look out for if you are concerned about infection or allergic reaction

We advise different aftercare techniques depending on the style of tattoo that you have. Typically, if the tattoo has lots of colour or shading, we will ask you to do technique 1 that stops the tattoo scabbing heavily. If your tattoo has light shading, dot shading or just line work, we advise second skin to heal it. 

Technique 1 (typically advised for heavy colour work):

• 3-4 hours after your tattoo session, using clean hands under the shower, remove the dressing that the artist applied in the studio. Make sure the water is not too hot as this can damage and irritate the skin. Clean away the gunk with fragrance free soap using circular motions with your hand. Do not use a flannel or sponge to clean it as this can harbour a lot of bacteria. 

• Step out of the shower and dry your tattoo using a kitchen towel (Do not use toilet paper, or any paper that breaks and leaves little bits on the tattoo) or leave it to air dry for 15 minutes (During this time do not let the tattoo touch anything ESPECIALLY pets. 

• Re-wrap the tattoo using cling film, don't apply it so tight that the tattoo can't breathe, but don't apply it so loose that any contaminants can get in. 

• For the next 48 hours (2 days) repeat this process every 3-5 hours, apart from when you are sleeping, then you should wash it just before you go to bed and just after you wake up. Use clean cling film each time, do not apply any cream during this phase. 

• On the morning of day 3, remove the cling film, wash and dry the tattoo as normal but do not re-apply cling film.  Here you can start to apply aftercare cream. I recommend hustle butter as it melts into the skin very easily, you can buy this at the studio. Only apply a very thin layer of cream, make sure it is fully rubbed in and that there is no cream sat on the surface of the skin suffocating the tattoo. 

• Until day 14, wash and dry your tattoo each morning and night, applying a thin layer of cream each time.  After day 14, your tattoo should be pretty much healed, it is normal for it to look dull for up to 6 weeks after the tattoo has been completed due to the skin settling down after healing.