Creative Crafting: Guest Blog Spot

We are Cara and Paul, the people behind Roood Boogie Bespoke Temporary Tattoos.

Along with the obligatory passion for all things arty, crafty and creative, we both come from the 9 to 5 slog in merchandise design, which covers an array of disciplines from product sourcing, branding, design and marketing.

But outside of office hours, we’re just your average pair of rock n’ rollin’, hippy, internet junkie, cocktail-pitcher swilling, inked and pierced, music loving nerds – and that’s pretty much the spirit of Roood Boogie…

it all started when Cara was putting together gift bags for her mates hen night and we realised we had the means to actually make these one-off temporary tattoos, customised with the names etc of the bride and groom, and using our own artwork based on the hen nights vintage theme. Needless to say, at the hen-do they went down a storm...

We were bombarded with enquiries, so started to look into the possibility of setting it up as a small business. We looked around and, there are other companies who can produce temporary tattoos to spec, but none of them offer the service on small quantities.

And to be honest it was all a bit dreary and business-like – none of them came from a true ‘tattoo art’ angle – it was all corporate logos and football club crests, and very little in the way of the free spirit art vibe that we have at Roood Boogie... plus there were no bespoke temporary tattoo services in the uk with any social media presence, so we decided to step in and fill the gap...

And that’s when we began to really see the full scope of potential markets for the service -

Things like

· hen and stag night
· themed parties
· product and brand launches/promotions
· a good merchandise line for bands
· a fun product for illustrators and designers to promote or sell their work
· and of course, a service to tattoo artists, who can have their flash sets produced as temporary tattoos, for re-sale as a kind of 'try before you ink yerself permanent' kinda thing...

It's this last concept that's really caught the imagination of a couple tattoo artists who we ran the idea past. They loved it and ordered several packs on the spot.

And we were lucky enough to get the awesome Joolz Denby on board with the idea – Joolz gave us license to use some of her New Model Army artwork and various tattoo designs, and these special edition sets can be found on our Etsy shop. Plus it was Joolz’s endorsement which contributed to us getting over 100 likes within days of creating our facebook page, which is still our main web presence.

So at the moment we’re busy scribbling and building up our design catalogue, with tattoos which can be bought off the peg or customised at no extra cost, or just used as inspiration for customers’ own designs – things like henna-inspired, maori and inca, floral designs, even working anaglyph 3D tattoos – which we are sure are truly unique!

On the whole we are overwhelmed at the initial success of the project, and we can’t wait to see how it develops. At the moment we are looking to work with more artists and designers who would like to use their artwork for tattoo sets to be available through our Etsy shop.

But we’re also loving the personal, bespoke element of the service – so far we’ve produced personalised tattoos for festivals, bands, clothing labels, as well as smaller individual orders for people who want to trial different designs or tattoo positioning before they face the tattoo gun for real.