Goodbye, Minnesota.

I don't even know where to start.

After a million years in Minnesota,
(or at least what feels like my entire adult life)
Meryl and I have decided to leave.
I wish I could say I love this house too much,
or I'd miss the May Day Parade or Powderhorn Park more than I could stand,
but I guess the truth is I'm ready for a new adventure.
Well, I'm not sure I'm ready ready,
but we're going anyway.
And where to?
Not back to the east coast,
or even the west coast,
but somehow deeper into the unknown,
and we're trading lakes for mountains.
Some day, maybe, we'll get back to the ocean,
but for now, Fort Collins, Colorado.

Tribal Rites Tattoo,
(home to super-inspiring tattooers
Curtis Burgess, Ben Merrell, and Erick Erickson)
was hiring.
I loved working at Tribal Rites during my guest spot in September.
They work so hard there,
and push themselves (as well as each other) to be better and better,
and I want to be a part of that.
I am grateful that they are hiring me,
and starting in the new year,
I'll be there full time.

So goodbye, Minnesota.
Not yet; and not forever, of course.
I don't leave till late December.
And I'll be back every so often to do guest spots.
A flight to Denver is quick and relatively cheap, too,
so you can visit whenever you want.

Thanks very much to Twilight Tattoo for having me the past year,
and Identity Tattoo for the 5 years previous.
Thanks to all my clients in Minnesota,
especially all of those who let me explore my style,
and get a little weird with some of my drawings.

I hope Colorado is ready for me.

Important invitations! (and a lot of tattoo pictures...)

Ok, you've seen the pictures from London (right?), so now we can move on to the important information stuff!
Not to worry, as the title suggests, it's not all text; there will be tattoo pictures in this post too, and plenty of them, you just gotta promise me to read the whole post first, ok?
Good, i knew i could trust you.

On Saturday October 19th (which is so very, very soon, i know), we're having a little party at the shop and even though this is waaay too short notice, we'd be happy if you'd come.
It's gonna be a little Oktober Fest themed get-together thing, so expect beer and possibly some German sausage of both the meat and veggie variety (if the weather allows us to light the grill, that is!)
We'll be starting at 16.00 / 4 pm and we'll shut it down when we're either tired or cold or both!
This is an open house, so it's ok to come by even if you don't know us personally, but of course we are hoping that our friends and clients will have time to drop by.
And we're not saying it's like a costume party or anything, but if you should feel like throwing on a dirndl or a pair of lederhosen, hey, we're not gonna stop you!

Now, this was originally supposed to be our opening party, but as you know if you've been following us for a while, we're just not good at those (the shop in Schleppegrellsgade was host to two Halloween parties, but it never officially opened), but we are great at theme parties, so we're doing that instead!

Which leads me to the next announcement; walk-in weekend!
We had such a fun time doing walk-in week back in June, but we decided this next one should be on a weekend instead, so we don't have to move bookings, and so that people who work during the week will also have a chance to come by.
The dates are the 8th, 9th and 10th of November, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and we hope to see a lot of people there.
We'll start at 13.00 / 1 pm every day and close when we feel like it... so same as every day, basically!
I'll be posting about this again, maybe with some flash previews, so check back!
Also, the flash that Uncle Allan didn't get to tattoo in London will be available for one off tattoos, so yeah, sexy lady tattoos are happening!

Ok, did you read everything?
Good, then you get to look at some pictures!
Some of them are by the guys, and some are by our guest artists, because it's still Guest Artist Madness Month here at Conspiracy Inc. (in case you forgot!)

Tattoo by Wendy Pham

The dude at the Indian restaurant is better at food than he is at pictures!

Tattoo by Adam Hays

Tattoo by Wendy Pham on our friend Marina

 Tattoo  by Aron Dubois

Tattoo by Electric Pick

Tattoo by Uncle Allan 

 Tattoo by Wendy Pham

 Allan and Adam sharing a moment at the street fair this weekend

Tattoo by Adam Hays 

 Tattoo by Electric Pick

Tattoo by Matthew Gordon

Tattoo by Wendy Pham

 Tattoo by Adam Hays

Tattoo in progress by Uncle Allan

Guest Artist Madness Month is great, by the way!
We've had Adam Hays and his girlfriend Marina visit, Electric Pick is staying with us at the house for a month, and currently Brian Thomas Wilson and Aron Dubois, and their assistant Annie, are at the shop (both have time for a few more tattoos, and you can read about how to contact them here).
It's been so great hanging out with friends, and having more than three people tattooing at the same time!
Not that we want the shop to be this busy all the time, but it's so much fun when it actually happens, and we're also just really enjoying all the good and inspiring conversations and ideas that come from having a bunch of awesome creative people under the same roof.

Ok, i will be back here to remind you about both Oktober Fest and Walk-in Weekend next week.
Thanks for reading!

Not-so-foggy London Town

I was in the middle of writing a really exciting post (no, really!) about upcoming events at the studio, but as i was uploading pictures, i realized that i had way too many for one post.
And also i feel like the London Tattoo Convention deserves a post of its own.
Not because i'm gonna write a whole bunch about it, but just cause the show was so kick-ass this year!
Like, it always is, but every year it gets just a little bit better, and so this was the best one yet.
We shared a booth with Chriss Dettmer (as we always do and always will!), and we had a great time, and Allan and Chriss got to do a bunch of cool tattoos.
There's still some left from the super sexy American Apparel flash that Allan did, though, but those will be available at the studio on upcoming flash days (more about that in the next post!)
We saw lots of clients, friends, healed tattoos from last year, and unlike the other years, we even had some good food and coffee!
Oh, and as the title of this post implies, the weather was pretty great too!
Yup, it was great.

Ok, pictures so we can move on to other important stuff.

We stayed at a new hotel this year, and holy shit, what a difference that made... never again, Ibis!

 Tattoo by Uncle Allan at the London Convention

Allan hard at work, as always

Tattoo by Uncle Allan at the London Convention

 Tattoo by Uncle Allan at the London Convention

Our booth, with all of Chriss's awesome handmade merchandise

 Tattoo by Uncle Allan at the London Convention

 Tattoo by Uncle Allan at the London Convention

Tattoo by Uncle Allan at the London Convention

Stay tuned for the next post, coming up in a matter of minutes, if i don't get distracted by something shiny or edible.