Q&A with Eden Body Art Studios about Tattoo Conventions

We love taking our tattooing talent on the road to conventions across the country. Our team recently brought home over a dozen awards for healed work at the Sinners Expo — including Best of Day (color; going to Monique Elizabeth) and Best of Show (going to Deanna)!

We’re pulling back the curtain a bit as to what people can expect from a tattoo convention and what we love about them.

People love conventions, but who would you say are the types of people going to these cons? 

At conventions you can expect to see tattoo artists and clients alike! You can also find vendors of tattoo supplies, as well as body piercers, jewelry, and other kinds of booths.

Do you see a lot of the general public there?

Conventions are open to the public! Lots of clients not yet familiar with our studio can come up to our booth, discuss information, watch our artists tattoo, and collect business cards and stickers.

What’s the atmosphere like at these conventions? 

For us, conventions are an awesome opportunity to meet new people in the industry as well as to hangout and catch up with those we haven’t seen in awhile. It’s cool for us and for clients to be able to walk around and see some of the best tattoo artists in the world making art right in front of you!
What are the biggest ones you have gone to?

The Sinners Tattoo Expo was our very first convention as a studio, but we will be attending Hell City in Phoenix next month which is a very large convention!

How does the competition element work? 

There are two kinds of competitions at conventions: healed tattoos, and tattoos done at the convention. For healed tattoos, there are dozens of categories: best black and grey, best portrait, best neo traditional, but backpiece, etc. For convention tattoos, there are best of day awards given out each day for tattoos completed that day, as well as best of show for any tattoo completed at the convention. At the Sinners Expo, our studio was awarded over a dozen awards for healed work! Monique Elizabeth was awarded Best of Day (color) on Saturday, and Deanna was awarded best of show at the conclusion of the event.

What do you love most about going to these tattoo conventions?

There are so many fun things about conventions, it’s hard to pick just one! At Sinners, the coolest thing was probably how many awesome compliments we got on the work our artists were doing as well as our booth in general. Both clients and artists were coming up to us the entire time telling us the booth looked amazing, or congratulating us on how many awards we’d one! Because we opened during the pandemic, being in the public eye like that was something we hadn't yet had the opportunity to do. It felt absolutely amazing to see our artists’ hard work recognized and we can’t wait for future conventions!