USA Trip (12th Sep - 8th Oct) - Day 5 - Drunken Monkey, Bronners & Saginaw

We had a bit of a sleep in on the next day after a busy day of travelling and then split up for the day.

I was dropped off at Drunken Monkey tattoo in Saginaw to get a tattoo and everyone else headed off to Frankenmuth.

Kristine and I had been watching a show called Ink Master for a few years, it's a 'reality' TV program which features contestants tattooing as part of a competition. One of my favourite artists on the show, Kyle Dunbar, competed on Season 3 and was voted back in to compete on Season 4. He also had a podcast about tattooing and the show, which I had listened to.

When planning our trip, I heard on the podcast that he was living and tattooing in Flint, Michigan, so I looked up his tattoo studio. It turned out that he was actually tattooing in Saginaw at a studio called Drunken Monkey. I joked with Kris about organising a tattoo with him and she got in contact with the studio and managed to get a booking for the time we were in Saginaw.

Normally when I get a tattoo done, I already have an idea exactly what I want and then find an artist, this time was different as I didn't really have a plan. I have only wanted tattoos that mean something to me, so I worked with AI to draft something up. I have a tattoo for my friends that have passed, one for my rugby club and one for Malmo, but I didn't really have anything for my kids. I recalled when Tomas was really sick with pancreatitis, we had just bought him the Captain America shield lego set and built it when he got better. He had always liked Captain America and it suited our trip to the US, so the first element was the Captain America shield. Cameron and I were both Starwars fans, so I added the lightsaber for him (fitting as he had signed up to make a lightsaber at Disney this trip) and Alana had always been involved in dance, so I added dance shoes (they are strictly ballet shoes and Alana doesn't do ballet anymore, but they were the most recognisable type of dance shoe).

I threw all of these into AI and asked it to put together a picture. The first one had the shoes tied to the blade of the lightsaber, so I made some changes and came up with a reasonable final design:

Kyle did a great job working with the design and making it ever better. He was a great guy and I really enjoyed the day and love the final product:

 

While this was going on, the rest of the family headed out to Frankenmuth the check out Bronner's Christmas Shop. I have posted about Bronner's a few times in earlier posts, but Tara and Brett have never been. They look like they had fun and everyone spent way too much money:

After finishing up at Bronner's, the family went to visit my Grandfather, Duane. When I finished up my tattoo and Kris picked me up and we spent a while longer with Duane before heading home for the night and cooked tacos for dinner.