Ashes Tattoo in Blackpool
An ashes tattoo is a tattoo made with a small portion of a loved one’s cremated remains mixed into the ink, so that the finished piece carries a part of the person you lost rather than only their likeness. Bubblegum Ink ®, a specialist studio in Sandbach, Cheshire, has made this its central work for around 20 years, within a tattooing career reaching back roughly 30. It can be made only once, with no second attempt possible, and that single fact is the reason the hands you choose to create it matter far beyond anything else.
For anyone in Blackpool carrying the loss of someone they loved, that permanence is exactly the point of it. So much of what we keep after a death sits slightly apart from us. An urn is placed somewhere and visited. A photograph is looked at and set back down. Belongings are folded away in drawers and brought out on the hard days. An ashes tattoo is different in kind, because it is not put anywhere and not kept at arm’s length; it is carried, worn in your own skin, with you on the seafront in a cold wind and in the quiet of an ordinary evening alike, for the rest of your life. That difference, between something you go to and something that simply stays, is what most people are really reaching for.
Just Over an Hour From Blackpool
Blackpool is an easy distance from the studio, more so than the map might suggest. By road it is around 67 miles, roughly an hour and a quarter down the M55 and M6, a straightforward run with nothing difficult about it. By train you would travel via Preston to Crewe, a little over two hours all told, with the studio only a few miles past Crewe station. There is no overnight to arrange and no day swallowed up by travel; most people drive over, spend an unhurried day at the studio, and are back on the coast the same evening. The decision can feel like a weighty one, but the practical business of getting here is not.
What Is Done to the Ashes, and Why It Matters
This part is worth dwelling on, because it is the one thing that genuinely separates a studio that does this work properly from one that does not, and most people have simply never had it explained. Cremated remains, as they come from the urn, are not a soft, even powder. They are coarse, they are not sterile, and the grains vary widely in size. A studio that takes them and stirs them straight into ink, which does happen, is leaving the way your skin heals around them to chance. With something as irreplaceable as a person’s ashes, that is not a chance worth taking.
The approach here is the reverse of that. A small portion of your loved one’s ashes is first brought down to a correct and consistent particle size. It is then cleaned, sterilised to a clinical standard, and cleared of contaminants, before being carefully prepared into the ink used on the day itself. The work is slow, exact and treated with the seriousness it deserves, and it is this preparation, honed over roughly two decades of doing little else, that lets a tattoo made this way heal every bit as cleanly as an ordinary one. The are ashes tattoos safe page explains the reasoning in full, and the adding ashes into tattoo ink page covers how the ink is made.
| Bubblegum Ink ® | A general tattoo studio | |
|---|---|---|
| Years specialising in ashes | Around 20 years, the studio’s main focus | Occasional, as a sideline |
| Ashes preparation | Matched, cleaned, sterilised, contaminants removed | Often used raw |
| Your loved one’s ashes in view | Yes, the whole time | Varies |
| Privacy of the appointment | A private one to one studio | Often a shared, busy floor |
| Travelling from Blackpool | A specialist just over an hour away | Whoever happens to be nearest |
Your Loved One Stays in the Room
Of all the quiet worries people bring to this, one sits above the rest, and it deserves the plainest answer there is: your loved one’s ashes never leave your sight. They are not carried off to a back room, nothing is done behind a closed door, and you are never asked simply to trust that the right ashes found their way into the right ink. You bring them, you watch the small portion being prepared, and you watch that portion worked into the tattoo, all of it in one room, in front of you, from start to finish. This is not a reassurance produced for those who think to ask. It is, without exception, how the work is always done.
The same promise has a gentler side to it. If, when the moment comes, you find you cannot face handling the ashes yourself, you will never be pushed to. Hand the container over exactly as it is and let that tender part be carried out for you, with care and respect, while you watch closely or look away entirely, whichever you need. Grief arrives in no fixed shape, and nothing about the day insists that it should. The appointment shapes itself around you.
Why People Pass Closer Studios
Blackpool and the wider Fylde coast have plenty of good tattooists, so it is a fair question why anyone would travel out to a small studio in Cheshire rather than stay near home. The answer is the same thread that runs through everything here. There is one portion of your loved one’s ashes and one chance to make something worthy of them, with no quietly redoing it if it goes wrong. Set against a fact like that, nearness counts for surprisingly little. Most people, sitting with the weight of it, would far rather entrust something this precious to someone who has spent two decades doing only this than to whichever studio happens to be closest to home. Measured that way, just over an hour on the road is a very small price.
A Quiet Studio With a Long Reach
It would be natural to assume a private studio down a quiet Cheshire road stays known only to its neighbours, but the truth runs the other way. The work has been featured on the BBC and covered by press at home and abroad, and the memorial tattoo created for Treo, one of the most decorated military dogs of recent years, became one of the most widely seen pieces of its kind anywhere in the world; the story is told on the tattooing ashes into clients page. Paul Cutler, who runs the studio, is an award winning tattoo artist of long standing, and yet for all of it, most people who come to him were sent by someone they know who was looked after here and never forgot it. In work this personal, that quiet kind of word travels further than any headline.
A Tribute Shaped Around the Person
Because no two people were ever quite the same, no two of these tattoos are either. Yours might be a portrait, or their handwriting taken from a card or letter they once wrote, or a date that holds meaning only within your family, a flower they loved, a few words from a song that was theirs, or a small private symbol whose meaning lives only between the two of you. Whatever form it finally takes, it is given the same patient, unhurried attention as every memorial made here before it. If your ideas are still forming, the memorial tattoo design ideas and handwriting ashes tattoo pages are a gentle place to start, and the mum ashes tattoo, dad ashes tattoo and grandparent memorial tattoo pages show how others have honoured the people they lost.
The Day, and the Room to Feel It
Something people travelling from Blackpool often notice, almost with relief, is how much space the day gives them. This is a private, one to one studio, so the appointment is entirely yours. There is no waiting room of strangers, no clock being watched, no feeling of being moved along to free up the chair. Some people want to talk, filling the time with memories of the person they have lost as the work goes on. Others prefer to say little and let the day pass quietly around them. Neither is more right than the other; each is simply grief settling into the shape that suits it, and the appointment becomes whatever the day asks of it.
When the work is done, the aftercare is talked through with you and written down to take home, because on a day already so full, no one should be left relying on memory to look after it. Caring for an ashes tattoo is no different from caring for any other, and you will leave with everything you need to do it well. You came to do something for the person you lost, and the whole shape of the day, from its unhurried beginning to the care you carry out with you, is arranged so that you can.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does the trip from Blackpool take?
By car it is around 67 miles and roughly an hour and a quarter, down the M55 and M6, which is how most people travel. By train it is a little over two hours via Preston to Crewe, with the studio only a few miles beyond Crewe station. Either way it works comfortably as a single day, with no need to stay over, although you are welcome to if it makes the day feel less rushed.
Is a tattoo made with ashes really as safe as an ordinary one?
Yes, as long as the ashes are properly prepared first, and that preparation is exactly what a specialist provides. The ashes are reduced to a consistent particle size, sterilised to a clinical standard and cleared of contaminants before they ever meet the ink. Prepared in that way, the tattoo heals just as any other would. The worries that occasionally surface trace back, every time, to raw and untreated ashes being used by people without the experience to handle them safely.
How much of the ashes do you actually need from me?
Only a very small amount, around a tablespoon, is used for the tattoo itself. You bring the whole container, only that small portion is taken, and all the rest goes home with you again. There is nothing you need to separate, weigh or prepare beforehand; it is all done at the studio, in front of you, on the day.
Can my dog or cat’s ashes be used, as well as a person’s?
Yes. Alongside memorial tattoos for people, the studio has long worked with the ashes of much loved pets too, prepared with precisely the same care and to the same clinical standard. Whether you are remembering a person, an animal companion, or both together, you are equally welcome.
I think I want this, but I am frightened of the tattoo itself. Is that normal?
Entirely normal, and you would be in very good company. A great many people who come for a memorial piece are nervous, and a good number have never been tattooed at all. The appointment is paced gently, with time to talk, to ask whatever you need to, and to settle before anything begins, and nothing happens until you feel ready for it. The feeling you are carrying about the person matters far more, on the day, than any nerves about the needle.
Reaching Out From Blackpool
There is no single right way to take the first step, and it really need not be a large one. For some people it is a phone call with a clear picture already in mind; for others it is just a few lines asking whether the thing they have been quietly imagining is even possible. Both are welcome, and neither ties you to anything beyond the conversation. From wherever you choose to start, the design, the day and the journey over can all be worked through gently, at the pace that feels right to you.
Call 01270 385001, email info@bubblegumink.com, or use the contact page or the contact form at the foot of this page. Bubblegum Ink ® is a private, appointment only studio in Sandbach, Cheshire. For anyone in Blackpool ready to carry a little of someone they loved, a specialist who has given two decades to this work is just over an hour away, waiting for whenever the time feels right.
This page was written by Paul Cutler, founder of Bubblegum Ink ®. He has worked as a tattoo artist for around 30 years and has spent roughly the last 20 specialising in cremation ashes tattoos, which makes him one of the most experienced people in this field anywhere in Britain. A multiple award-winning artist, his memorial work has been covered by the BBC and by national and international press. More about Paul and the studio.