Mayalaen

Arynn won a first-place plaque for an art contest at a convention this week!!

I’m so freakin’ proud of her!

She didn’t enter any of her tattoos, but she loves to do spontaneous on-stage art contests. She went up against some really good local and a few out-of-state artists, and she won!!

She’s a shy person around everybody at the shop, but I’ve encouraged her to tell me about things she’s excited about, and she sent me a text with pics after she won.

I gushed at her and told her how proud I was and she just did the little shy happy face back :D

My mom convinced me that since I use Tumblr and that’s the birthplace of so many memes I should use said memes for the business’ social media accounts. Entertain people and get closer to them and you’ll be ahead of the curve on memes because it takes a while for memes to hit other social media places.

So I was like YES that’s a great idea.

I shall make tattoo-themed memes.

It’ll entertain followers.

And they’ll enjoy following me instead of just seeing ads all the time.

It’ll be more personal, which is HUGE in the tattoo industry.

So I create my masterpiece.



I posted it to FB and immediately I was inundated with people asking if I’d been hacked, what the hell is that thing, what’s with the monster, what’s a LAAMP, and can you send me a link to your online store page for that lamp because I want to buy it.

So I guess when mememing on FB I need to treat it more like a funny advertisement for a particular product that I actually have rather than just entertainment.

FB is fun.

I didn’t end up closing the tattoo side of the shop.

Charlie fired Evan, and it turned out to be a good thing. Tension is gone at the shop and the other artists are much happier.

A guy that worked at the shop a couple years ago moved back into town and he’s back at our shop, and everybody is getting along well. I’ll have to come up with a name for the dude on here :)

Arynn is going to have her baby soon and is going to go down to 1 day a week until she’s back on her feet. I’ll miss her, but I’m just happy she’s healthy and her baby is doing well.

Charlie, Marissa, Madelyn and I had another video chat last night and we talked over what we want to do with the shop from here on out.

We’re going to keep working on finishing up the changes I’ve made, then a friend of mine who is a Big Deal Dude in the tattoo industry is going to advertise the shop as being on sale for me. He’ll see if we can get some good offers.

Big Deal Dude has helped me out other times and he knows pretty much everybody in the industry. They all respect him. So I’m excited to see if he can help us get a good offer or two.

In the meantime the four of us are all on the same page for the shop. We’re all very tired and worn out, but we’re still proud of what we’re doing and the supply side is going really well.

The tattoo side is running about half capacity, but it’s picking up.

So even though I’m tired and busy most of the time, it’s looking better than it was for the last few months and I have hope we’re all working toward the same goals.

I need to go make dinner for the parental units now, but I just wanted to throw out some good news for once. I haven’t had a lot of it lately, and I hate always being a downer :)

So HIIIII!!!