How   this   works.

What this is

One site, one roster, one page for each artist.

1,253 artists and 3,408 photographs of healed work. Each page carries the artist's name, their handle, their city, their work with a written description of what is in each photograph, and one way to reach them. That page is also a booking link an artist can put in an Instagram bio, so the address they hand out belongs to them instead of being a rented spot inside somebody else's app.

The style pages are cuts of this one roster, not separate websites. There are 10 styles tracked, 9 with enough artists to have a page of their own. An artist who works in two styles is one record on two lists, not two records.

stabme.ink is run by a working tattoo artist. Where this site says "we" it means that artist and whoever has joined them.

How a booking request works

1. You find one artist. On the artist index, on a style page, on a region page, or straight out of a search result or an assistant's answer. Every route ends at one named artist, because every request goes to one named artist.
2. You send from their page, or from the booking form. Where the tattoo goes, tapped on a body map. The idea, the size, the timing. A name and an email. Photographs are optional. No account is made and no card is asked for at any point.
3. It goes to that artist and to nobody else. If they hold their page it lands in their studio inbox and their email the moment you send, and the reply comes from them rather than from us. If they have not claimed the page, we pass it to their public email where there is one and say plainly that a reply can take longer, or we hold it so it is waiting for them the day they claim.
4. The artist decides. Nothing is booked until they accept, and the reply comes from them.

The one promise stabme.ink makes about itself, on the surfaces stabme.ink answers: a working artist reads every request, and where we can find a strong match we reply within two days. If we cannot, we say that too. We never promise an artist's own reply time, because we do not control it.

Some artists switch on a calendar picker instead of the form. When they have, their page shows real open times. The mechanism:

• The times are their real calendar. We ask the artist's own Google Calendar which hours are already taken, inside the hours they set, in their timezone, with the minimum notice they asked for. We are told busy or open and nothing else: we never read what any of those events are. If the calendar cannot be reached, the picker does not appear at all rather than offering a time nobody can honor.
• A video consult confirms itself. Pick it and it is booked: the appointment is written into the artist's calendar and a calendar invite goes to you, with a meeting link if the artist turned video consults on.
• An in person consult does not. Booking one sends a request and holds that time so nobody else takes it. Nothing goes on the artist's calendar until they accept. They confirm it personally, and the studio address comes in that confirmation, so please do not travel until it arrives.
• An unanswered request lapses instead of hanging. Twenty four hours, then the hold releases, the time reopens and you are told.
• You can cancel from the email. A link, no login and no account. Please use it rather than not turning up, so the artist can give that hour to somebody else.

What stabme.ink reviews

1. 001
   The work was reviewed.

   A person who tattoos for a living opened the artist's published work and judged that it fits a style. It is a judgment about pictures, made by one working tattooer, and it is the only reason anybody is on this roster.

2. 002
   Every page says where it came from.

   Each artist page prints a line next to the artist's name saying how the page came to exist, and there are two forms of it and only two: built by stabme.ink from that handle's public Instagram, or claimed by the artist.

What stabme.ink does not verify

1. 001
   Nobody checked the person.

   No license, no registration, no insurance policy, no identity document, no training record, no health inspection, no criminal record and no references. stabme.ink runs none of those on anybody, and no page on this site says that any artist is safe to be tattooed by. If you read a page here as a recommendation, we have written it badly.

2. 002
   Why there is no license badge.

   There is no version of a license check that is true across this roster. Some US states license the individual artist, some license only the shop, some leave it to the county and some have no body art law at all. In England the council registers a tattooist and has no power to refuse, so registration says nothing about skill. Scotland weighs training and experience. Wales only started licensing practitioners in November 2024. Across the rest of Europe it runs from a hygiene course to a premises license to nothing at national level. One badge reading "licensed" would be false somewhere on almost every page.

3. 003
   No page carries a verification mark.

   A mark here would name what was tested and what it does not say: "Instagram control checked" would mean somebody proved control of an account on a date, and only that. No artist page carries any mark today. The word "verified" does not appear on its own anywhere on this site, and it should not be used about anybody on it.

The limit. Somebody who knows what a tattoo is looked at the work. Nobody checked the person. Those are two different sentences and this site is only entitled to the first one. The long version is in the terms, and it says the same thing in the same words.

Payments

Money is settled between you and the artist, the way it always has been. stabme.ink takes no cut of a booking, holds no card, and has no payment code in it at all: no cart, no checkout, no escrow.

Nothing on this site is for sale. Not placement, not features, not a better spot in any list. Order on a page is roster order or distance, never money and never follower count.

A consult costs nothing and there is nothing to pay to hold one. stabme.ink never asks anybody for money. The artist contacts you directly about any deposit, and anyone claiming to be from stabme.ink and asking you to pay is a scam.

What to check yourself

These are the checks that actually tell you something, and they are yours to make.

1. 001
   Ask to see the license, where there is one.

   Most shops that hold one display it. Where a license or a registration exists, a working artist will show it to you without being awkward about it. Where there is nothing to show, that is often the law and not a warning sign.

2. 002
   Ask your local health department, not us.

   They are the ones who inspect the shop, and in most places they will tell you whether it is registered and when it was last looked at. That is a real check, made by people with the authority to make it. We have no such authority and no such record.

3. 003
   Confirm through the artist's own channel.

   Message the handle on Instagram and confirm the appointment, and anything about a deposit, there. The artist contacts you directly about a deposit, and a real request will match their own public account. Anyone claiming to be from stabme.ink and asking you to pay is a scam.

4. 004
   Look at the address before you go.

   Most of them are working shops. If the address turns out to be a private home, that is between you and the artist, so take somebody with you and tell a friend where you are going. stabme.ink has never seen any of these addresses. We only publish a map link when an artist has given us an exact one and confirmed it, and no artist has yet, so no page here shows directions.

5. 005
   Ask for healed work.

   A photograph taken ten minutes after the needle flatters everybody. Healed work at six months is the honest picture, and it is the thing this site tries to show. Ask for more of it, of the same body part, at the same size.

If a page here is about you

1,246 of the 1,253 pages on this site were written by stabme.ink from public work, so the roster would be useful from day one. 7 have been claimed by the artist since. Being listed was our decision and not theirs, so everything below is theirs to use.

• Take it over. Claiming runs at /claim/ and takes a couple of minutes. The studio then edits the one record your page is built from: profile, photographs, links, conventions, guest spots, store, requests, booking. Change it there and it changes everywhere the page appears. No card, no trial, nothing to pick.
• Take it down. One email to [email protected] saying which handle, and the page comes down. No reason required, no account required, nothing to prove. We answer the same day we read it and aim to have it gone inside seven days. What actually gets deleted, and what a search engine may still be holding, is its own page.
• Fix it instead. Wrong city, wrong name, wrong style, or work on the page that is not yours. Tell us which and we change it the same day we read it. The style we list you under is our reading of your published work and not a statement you made about yourself, and it is the thing we get wrong most often.
• Nothing here is charged for. Not being listed, not claiming, not leaving. The covenant is that written down and dated.