Ashes Tattoo in Leicester
An ashes tattoo is a tattoo made with a small portion of a loved one’s cremated remains worked into the ink, so that the finished piece does not merely depict the person you lost but holds a part of them within it. Bubblegum Ink ®, a specialist studio in Sandbach, Cheshire, has made this the centre of its work for around 20 years, set within a tattooing career that reaches back roughly 30. It is made only once, and there is no making it again, which is the single reason that the choice of who creates it stands above every other choice you will make.
For someone in Leicester living with the loss of a person who mattered, that permanence is the entire point. The things we keep after a death tend to sit at a distance from us. An urn waits on a shelf to be visited. A photograph is taken down, looked at, and put back. Letters and belongings are kept in drawers and opened now and then. An ashes tattoo is none of those things, because it is not kept at all, it is carried, worn in your own skin and present with you through the long ordinary stretches of a day and the moments that catch you off guard, for the rest of your life. That difference, between something you visit and something that simply stays with you, is what draws most people to it in the first place.
The Journey From Leicester
Leicester is a comfortable distance from the studio, closer than many expect. By road it is around 71 miles, a little over an hour and a half up the M6, an easy and familiar route with no awkward stretches to it. By train you would travel via Nuneaton or Derby to Crewe, around two hours in all, with the studio only a few miles past Crewe station. There is no overnight to arrange and no long expedition to brace for; most people travel over, spend an unhurried day at the studio, and are home again the same evening. For all that the decision itself can feel enormous, the practical side of getting here is genuinely straightforward.
What Actually Happens to the Ashes
It is worth taking a moment over this, because it is the single thing that separates a studio that does this work properly from one that does not, and most people have never had it explained to them. Cremated remains, as they come from the urn, are not a fine, even material. They are coarse, they are not sterile, and the particles vary enormously in size. A tattoo studio that simply stirs them into ink as they are, which does happen, is gambling with how your skin will receive and heal around them. That is not a gamble worth taking with something irreplaceable.
Here, the approach is the opposite of that. A small portion of your loved one’s ashes is first brought down to the correct, consistent particle size. It is then cleaned, sterilised to a clinical standard, and cleared of contaminants, before being carefully prepared into the ink that will be used on the day itself. The work is slow, methodical and treated with the seriousness it plainly deserves, and it is precisely this preparation, refined over around two decades of doing little else, that allows a tattoo made this way to settle and heal exactly as cleanly as any ordinary one. If you would like to understand it more fully, the are ashes tattoos safe page sets out the reasoning in detail, and the adding ashes into tattoo ink page explains how the ink itself 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 Leicester | A specialist under ninety minutes away | Whoever happens to be nearest |
Nothing Leaves Your Sight
Of every question and quiet worry people carry into this, one matters more than all the rest, and it deserves the plainest possible answer: your loved one’s ashes never leave your sight. They are not taken into a back room, nothing is done behind a closed door, and at no point are you asked to simply trust that the right ashes ended up in the right ink. You bring them, you watch the small portion being prepared, and you watch that portion go into the tattoo, all of it in the same room, in front of you, from beginning to end. This is not a special reassurance offered to those who ask for it. It is simply, and always, how the work is done.
There is a softer side to the same promise. If, when the day comes, you find you cannot bring yourself to handle the ashes, you will never be pressed to. You can hand the container over exactly as it is and let that tender part be carried out for you, gently and with respect, while you watch closely or look away entirely, whichever you need in that moment. Grief does not arrive in a predictable shape, and nothing about the day demands that it should. The appointment bends around you.
Why People Travel Past Closer Studios
Leicester is a large city with no shortage of skilled tattooists, so it is a perfectly fair question why anyone would travel out to a small studio in Cheshire instead of staying close to home. The answer is the same one that runs underneath everything else on this page. There is one portion of your loved one’s ashes, and there is one opportunity to turn it into something worthy of them. If it is done badly, it cannot be quietly undone and tried again. Held up against a fact like that, mere closeness stops being the thing that matters. The great majority of people, when they sit with it, would far rather place something this precious in the hands of someone who has spent two decades doing only this than with whichever studio happens to be on the nearest high street. The drive, in that light, is a small thing.
A Quiet Studio With a Long Reach
You might reasonably assume that a private studio tucked down a quiet road in Cheshire would be known only to the people nearby. The opposite has turned out to be true. The work has been featured on the BBC and covered by press both in this country 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 full story sits 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 that, the greater number of people who arrive at his door were sent there by someone they know, someone who was looked after here and did not forget it. In work this personal, that kind of quiet recommendation tends to carry further than anything else.
A Tribute Shaped Around the Person
Because no two people are ever quite alike, no two of these tattoos are either. Yours might take the form of a portrait, or their own handwriting lifted from a card or a letter they once wrote, or a date that means something only within your family, a flower they loved, a line from a song that belonged to them, or a small and private symbol whose meaning will only ever be understood by you and by them. Whatever shape it finally takes, it is given exactly the same patient, unhurried attention as every memorial piece made here before it. If you are still letting ideas take shape, the memorial tattoo design ideas and handwriting ashes tattoo pages are a gentle and unpressured place to begin, and the mum ashes tattoo, dad ashes tattoo and grandparent memorial tattoo pages gather some of the ways others have chosen to remember the people they loved.
The Day, and the Room to Feel It
One thing people who travel from Leicester often remark on, almost with surprise, is how much room the day leaves them. This is a private, one to one studio, which means the appointment is yours and yours alone. There is no waiting area full of strangers, no sense of a clock being watched, no feeling of being moved briskly along to make space for the next person. Some people arrive wanting to talk, filling the time with stories about the person they have lost as the work is done. Others would rather say very little and let the day pass quietly around them. Neither is more correct than the other, because each is only grief finding the shape that fits it. The appointment simply becomes whatever the day needs it to be.
When it is finished, the aftercare is talked through with you properly, and written down for you to take away, because on a day already heavy with feeling no one should be left depending on memory for how to look after it. You came to do something for the person you lost, and every part of the day, from the unhurried start to the care you leave with, is arranged so that you are able to do exactly that.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does the journey from Leicester actually take?
By car it is around 71 miles and a little over an hour and a half, straight up the M6, which is the way most people choose. By train it is roughly two hours, travelling via Nuneaton or Derby to Crewe, with the studio only a few miles past Crewe station. Either way it sits comfortably within a single day, with no need to stay over, though you are very welcome to if it makes the day feel less pressured.
Is a tattoo made with ashes genuinely as safe as a normal one?
Yes, provided the ashes are properly prepared first, and that preparation is the heart of the work here. The ashes are reduced to the correct particle size, sterilised to a clinical standard and cleared of contaminants before they are ever mixed into the ink. Prepared that way, the tattoo heals exactly as a normal one would. The risks that occasionally get talked about trace back, without exception, to raw and untreated ashes being used by people without the experience to handle them safely.
How much of my loved one’s ashes will you actually use?
Only a very small amount, around a tablespoon, is needed for the work itself. You bring the whole container, only that small portion is taken, and everything else 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 more than one person be remembered in the same tattoo?
Yes, this is something families ask for more often than you might think, where more than one loved one has been lost. Whether it is best brought together into a single piece or kept as separate elements is something to talk through when you first get in touch, so that the design can be planned with proper thought around everyone it is meant to honour.
What if I am not sure I am ready, or not sure what I want?
That is completely understood, and there is no timetable you are expected to keep to. Some people come within weeks of a loss; others wait years, until a particular date or a settled feeling tells them the time has come. Equally, you do not need to arrive with the design already worked out, as talking it through is part of what the first conversation is for. The ashes keep perfectly well, and so does the welcome, for whenever you feel ready.
Reaching Out From Leicester
There is no single right way to take the first step, and it genuinely need not be a large one. For some people it is a phone call with a clear idea already in mind; for others it is no more than a short message asking whether the thing they are quietly imagining is even possible. Both are entirely welcome, and neither commits you to anything beyond the conversation itself. From wherever you begin, the design, the day and the journey over can all be worked through gently, at whatever pace 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 Leicester ready to carry a little of someone they loved, a specialist who has given two decades to this work is under ninety minutes away, waiting for whenever the time is right.
Written by Paul Cutler, the founder of Bubblegum Ink ®. He has worked as a tattoo artist for around 30 years and, for roughly the last 20 of them, has specialised in cremation ashes tattoos, which places him among the most experienced people working in this particular field anywhere in Britain. A multiple award-winning artist, his memorial work has been featured by the BBC and by national and international press. You can read more about Paul and the studio here.