Give the gift of ink

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The tattoo collector in your life probably doesn’t know how to tell you this, but they want money for Christmas … so they can buy tattoos.

This week presents a unique opportunity to purchase some ink with the Friday the 13th tattoo flash sale at Spotted Dog Tattoo & Boutique downtown.

Pre-designed tattoos, called tattoo “flash” will be available for a reduced price of $31 each. Designs are in black ink only and cannot be made larger or smaller. People will be able to walk in to the shop all day from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. to get tatted on a first-come first-served basis.

Consider buying your tattoo lover a gift certificate, either to use on the 13th or for a larger piece whenever they choose. While some may balk at the idea of permanent body art, a person with tattoos usually sees them as a part of who they are, good or bad. You can be a part of them by giving them a gift they will have forever and always remember you.

A tattoo gift certificate is an opportunity for a person to get something meaningful to them permanently engraved, and it is also an experience gift you and the person can do together.

Friday the 13th is a well known tattooing holiday, when most shops offer discounted tattoos, often featuring the number 13 in the design along with other superstitious or spooky themes like black cats, broken mirrors or full moons. If you know someone whose favorite Christmas and Halloween movie is “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” this is probably the perfect gift for them.

The tradition was, according to the New York Times, started by tattoo artist Oliver Peck in 1996 and is now the norm in most shops.

Shawna Talamante, owner of Spotted Dog, said this will be the second Friday the 13th promotion for the shop since it opened up last year. She said her style is mostly black and grey, dotwork, fine lines and script work. The style of the other shop artist, Trina Mink, is colorful flowers, animals, and geometric crystals. The normal shop pricing is $100 an hour, but Talamante said they will be raising the cost to $125 an hour in January.

This time of the year is when she sees a lot of gift certificates being bought, she said, and the beauty of the tattoo is that it can be a good gift for a person of any age (over 18 of course).

While the cliche is young people running out and getting tattoos, she said a gift certificate can be a good way to give a person in your life who has always wanted to get one, but has never taken the leap, the push they need to do it.

Talamante said she once had an 80-year-old patron who was gifted a certificate by her sister for her birthday and used it to get her first-ever tattoo. Try almost everything once right?