Dragonland Tattoo — Attraction in Hopkins

What a horrible experience with Kelli. My sister and I were supposed to get correlating tattoos today that we scheduled 3 months ago. Our time slot was 12:30-6. $175/hr or $450 for a half day. We kept being told that we wouldn’t be able to see a sketch til the day of the appointment, but that there would be a lot of “buffer” time in between appointments in order to make any adjustments if something wasn’t to our liking. We also asked if there would be time to work with Kelli together and her assistant reassured us several times that although we wouldn’t be able to be in the shop at the same time (for pandemic reasons, understandable) , that we could either FaceTime and talk through the sketches or that Kelli would come outside so that we could work out what the tattoos would be. Come 1:15, my sister is shown one single sketch (black line work flora with minimal shading as requested) while standing at the front desk and Kelli refuses to come outside to work with us together and it’s too loud in the studio to FaceTime. Okay.... then my sister relays from Kelli that NO adjustments would be able to be made today because there “wouldn’t be enough time.” She was planning on tattooing the same sketch on both of us, and I wasn’t allowed to see it or give my opinion until after my sister had it tattooed?. My sister goes ahead and gets the tattoo, and I wait outside until 4PM (that’s 3.5 hours for all of you keeping track). My sister finally comes out shell shocked that she spent $450 on JUST her tattoo, and that’s before the tip. The tattoo was supposed to take 40 min- hour and it somehow took 2.5 hours. At this point I call into the studio because I still haven’t been allowed in even though my appointment started an hour previously. I let them know how frustrated I was and that I would be walking away from my appointment since there was no original sketch, no time for making adjustments, and definitely not enough time for a 2.5 hour, $500 tattoo. I’ve had seven different tattoo shop experiences and I’ve never had such an unprofessional artist. The tattoo my sister ended up with is beautiful but the whole point was that we were going to get them together and now it’s also going to be this upsetting, frustrating memory where I didn’t get mine. The art is not worth working with someone so inflexible and expensive. Highly do not recommend, especially when there...

Unfortunately the experience my wife and I had here was disappointing. We waited several months for our consultation, and when we signed up we were told to bring lots of references so that we could sit down with an artist and plan out a custom tattoo. When we arrived, we were called up for our "consultation" which consisted of about 10 minutes spent standing at the reception counter while people came and went around us.

We tried to talk through some of our ideas, but it quickly became clear that the artist we met was just waiting for us to pick a single image and call it a day. Their attitude was just cold. We started off by complimenting their work (they were obviously very talented) and trying to build a connection but it felt like they clearly didn't want us there. No real interest in designing anything custom, not much of a response given to any of the ideas we put out. They told us it would be $500 and a 5 month wait to get a tattoo about the size of a hand print, and even that would essentially just be their rendition of one of the existing pictures we brought in.

We felt sort of bewildered and went ahead with the $100 deposit, thinking maybe we could email the artist and work on something more compelling, but after sleeping on it we decided the experience was just not at all what we were hoping for. We called to cancel, and were told that the deposit is non-refundable in all cases. I could understand this position if the artist had seriously devoted any of their time, but we felt like even the 20-25 minutes total we spent in the store was just a bother to them. Granted, we could have asked before paying, but overall it's left us feeling like we spent $100 to be told "Sure we'll tattoo you, but we don't really care if you like how it goes."

Everything else about the shop was nice, great atmosphere, clearly skilled artists, I'm sure they use safe...

I wanted to wait until my tattoo healed a bit more to post this, so I could share pictures! I went and saw Kat Vigdal, last Monday to get a few bands done, and she did an amazing job! Before meeting Kat, I had spoken with a few others shops and they all more or less discouraged me from getting them, because they are hard to do. Now, I understand that they are a difficult tattoo for obvious reasons, but it was still disheartening to be discouraged from getting something I was so excited about; this was also my first tattoo! However, both Steph and Kat put my concerns at ease as soon as I met both of them. They explained why those types of tattoos can be difficult, but then assured me that they could do them and do a good job. So, I decided on Dragon Land, and can say with certainty that Dragon Land will be my shop of choice for any more art going forward. Steph was upbeat, professional, courteous, and informative! Kat, was all those things, while also being very thorough about making sure my stencil was straight, the design was exactly what I wanted, and made sure I was comfortable the entire time! 10/10 will recommend visiting their shop and ask for Kat, she does...