Pepper Ink began in 2012- we make beautiful vintage and custom temporary tattoos. I’ve always been creative and crafty, and when I was looking for my next tattoo I wanted some lovely temporary designs to try out and fill the space on my skin but couldn’t find anything I liked. Hence the idea of temporary tattoos for grown-ups, with the kind of designs I’d love to wear. I started collecting designs and printing one page at a time as orders came in with a little folder for all my packaging materials, all in a corner of the spare room. 5 office changes, 3 assistants and countless cups of tea later, here we are! I work with my assistants Jessica and Megan from a home studio with lots of natural light, cheerful music and a running tab from the local sushi bar.

I love tattoos, I like to be inspired and wear beautiful things, and I like to help other people who feel the same. My own tattoos are a story of my changing self and I suppose Pepper Ink is about that too, the growth of a person and what we find inspiring, beautiful and meaningful. We do a lot of custom work to commemorate an occasion or try out a design before permanent tattooing and we’ve made tattoos for people who can’t get a real one for medical reasons; one of my favorites is a customer who had a scar from heart surgery and covered it with a beautiful vintage anatomical heart tattoo.

Many of our designs are from vintage illustrations, some are my design and some are from other designers that I’ve collaborated with. We also have featured artists and some of those stay on and introduce extra pieces to become part of the collection. Ours is a continual process, we release designs often and at the same time discontinue designs that are the least popular; really our customers drive our collections as we listen to what they’d like to wear and what inspires them the most.

 

We hope you enjoy wearing our designs as much as we enjoyed making them!

x Pepper, Jessica & Megan