Worst experience of my life!! It has taken me a lot of time and courage to get over the trauma I experienced at this shop. Please note, I am an artist myself and design things all the time for others... I just never ever expected for my worst fears to become a reality!
A few weeks ago, I walked in asking for a whimsical & minimalistic tattoo, I signed the consent form and made my deposit; I left the next day with a permanent mistake! This was my first tattoo and I expected the best quality work and professionalism performed by any artist at this shop, since this shop is owned and operated by Cleen a top notch rated artist in the area. Plus they have very good word of mouth. Unfortunately, this was not the case for me. I left completely distraught and permanently scarred and traumatized for the rest of my life!
Artist James Keller aka: @LVJamesTattoos needs to chose another profession!! This is not your calling in life sir. If you still believe you're a good artist, how about we take a vote and you post the pictures of the work you did on your social media pages!! This artist that I overpaid for a crappy tattoo deserves to be fired and never ever tattoo anyone else! He didn't even do what I asked, the final tattoo is not even close to the sketch he drew for me. He literally did things on my body that should be illegal to do to someone, especially when they're getting paid it's the clients first time getting a tattoo! To top it off, the artist yelled and got all up in my face like he was going to hit me, all while I was crying trying to figure out what happened and what went wrong! The artist also threatened me to call the cops, claiming he needs the money has bills and kids to feed!!! He claimed the shop gets 75% of the profit and that's why he was charging me so much money. I just couldn't wrap my head around the whole situation. James literally bounced out of the shop and left me alone the moment I said go ahead call the cops, let's see what happens! I believe he was operating equipment and working under the influence because he flipped out cruising at me and claiming it's my fault because I kept moving!! I was like, how is this my fault? I never moved, I never asked for shading, I should've of left and ran out the door the moment he treated me like scum. What I should've of done is waited for the cops to be called and let them settle the whole situation. Instead, I paid up and left.
As for the shop, thank you to the artists that were there and consoled me while I cried profusely for 4hours+. Thank you to Cleen for responding to my texts and promising me to get this tattoo fixed. I have a redo scheduled with a different artist, I hope it gets fixed as promised. I'll leave a review again once I see how it turns out. Hopefully it's a 5-star for the next artist!
For those of you wondering, this horrific experience (tattoo) cost me $320 and didn't last more than an hour! Which is not common practice around tatted world. I expected this artwork to last anywhere from 3-4hours!
Picture #1: This is the sketch of how I expected my tattoo to look like. I asked the artist (James) to remove the umbrella (to me looks like a mushroom), clean up the waves make them look more like waves with hooks, clean up the pine trees, get rid of the lines coming out of the black circle, clean up the clouds on the beach side to make it look less like pine trees, and to add a small Aries constellation to the beach side.... he didn't do or listen to anything I had to say!!! You can see by looking at the next picture.
Picture #2: finished look while in the shop.
Picture #3: Healed tattoo, looking a lot worse than when I got it! For the record, I have taken care of it daily. I have washed and followed all the instructions given to me by the shop.
Picture #4-5: is the artist James
End result: It looks horrible, disgusting, I want to puke. Not what I imagined, paid for, or even had drawn up for me!!! It's not even a circle! Missed the mark completely on this one. read more