Greetings from our second home

Hello from Japan!
It's a bit of a rainy day today, and i have no plans, so i figured it was the perfect time to do some blogging.
Allan is tattooing, so maybe i'll post some tattoo pictures from Japan soon, but until then, i actually have some shop pictures to share.
I shot a film on our trip to Germany, and finished it in Copenhagen the day we left for Japan.
The Germany pictures are over here, if you're interested (there's a peek at the paintings as well), but i figured that at least some of the ones taken at the shop belonged on this blog!
All pictures were taken with my Canon AE-1, which is (in case you didn't know) the bestest and prettiest camera in the whole world. Yup, sure is.

Front room goodness

 Corner details

Nørrebro

 Around the lake

 Workroom corner

 Photo lab in the back room

 Last client the day before leaving for Japan was our good buddy Christel, who's obviously a total badass

More Japan goodness soon... probably!

Client's view

Our shop has come a long way since we moved in here almost two years ago (... really? has it been that long??), but since we're not in the construction phase anymore, thank god, we don't often get around to taking pictures of our progress.

So i was really happy when Luba and Roman from Russia sent me pictures from their visit earlier this month. 

It's nice to see the shop from a visitors perspective, and can i just say, it looks pretty good.

Of course we always see what's missing, and notice all the little things we'd like to improve, but all in all, it's not too bad!

No more talk, see for yourself!

Front room

 

 Front room/office view

 

Pretty Lucifer

Work room

 Uncle Allan

Electric Pick at work

 Hallway instax wall of fame

And Luba's free handed tattoo, stolen from Allan's instagram

Prepare to be SPOOKED!

I was just about to give myself a hard time for not having had the time to take more pictures on Saturday, but now that i'm uploading the ones i did take, i'm almost glad i didn't!
I'm not gonna get too much into details about Halloween Walk-in Day, cause if you wanted to know, well, then you could have just dropped by, couldn't you?
But i will say that we me, Allan, Chriss and our guests had a wonderful day.
The shop looked awesome, pretty much everyone who came were dressed up in great costumes, we ate a ton of snacks, the mood was nice and relaxing, and everyone who wanted to get tattooed got tattooed.*
But if you missed it, don't worry; this will definitely not be our last Halloween event.

Welcome!

 Spooky shop detail

 This is what my hair actually looks like; i just wear a short wig to not make people all jealous and stuff

Uncle All... ehm, i mean King Diamond!

Chriss the Cow tattooing Björn (sorry, didn't get a picture of that one)

Part of our spooky pumpkin collection

Undead cheerleaders needs tattoos too

As do cockroaches and elephants (although they came a bit late, so they got theirs on Monday)

Wookie didn't think he was getting tattooed, so it's good that he brought an evil nurse for moral support

 King and Cowboy (i'm kinda bummed that i didn't get a picture of the stormtroopers... yes, there were stormtroopers!)

By Chriss Dettmer on Wookie

Christel's amazing pumpkin muffins

By Chriss on Martin

And a second one for Martin; Helle makes sure he isn't too exhausted from that first one

Eeeevil clementines

 A close-up of my last minute horns... not too bad, right?

Lucifer was dressed up too (but only for a little while and mostly so my parents, who aren't pictured cause they weren't in costume, could see him)

 Wednesday Addams and her sailor (lifted from Martin's instagram)

 The Creepy Conspiracy Crew (also lifted from Martin's instagram)

Halloween flowers from my parents

 

The tattoos Allan did on Saturday and Monday (click image for a bigger view)

Update: Allan had a picture of the troopers in their size 8 years old costumes!

Whoa, that turned out to be quite the giant post after all!
See you again for more spookiness next year, i hope!

*Except yours truly, but really, who's surprised?

The buy of the century (probably)

Buying a grill for the shop is something we've been talking about doing ever since it started to get warmer in Copenhagen, and on Friday we finally bought one.

Me and Eckel went to the hardware paradise known as Silvan to look at the selection, and found the Dancook 7400 to be both reasonably priced and sized.

This is one of the (many) test pictures we sent to Allan

And here's our fancy new purchase

I may have also bought this giant toolbox that fits almost all of our tools (and a ton of stuff for the garden)

The weather wasn't all that great, so we ate in the kitchen, but it was awesome and delicious nonetheless!

(Sorry for the crappy picture!)

Shop barbecues are so my new favorite thing, and i hope we'll be able to do this all week until it's freezing outside again!

Ps. Don't forget we have a guest artist coming soon, click here to read more about him and see some of his work!

Soft serve

Our friend Ai, who is a wonderful blogger and photographer, is selling a few of her photos in support of Red Cross' relief work in Japan.
We ordered one, and it arrived at the shop yesterday when we were busy shipping our own prints to support the same cause.
Her photos, and others, are for sale here, so go check them out.
Prices are reasonable, quality is high, they are well packed, and you can even choose between two sizes.

Ours is the 8"x12" print in Lustre... so delicious and it fits our photo wall so well!

Happy birthday to us!!

Yes, you read that right, it's our birthday!
Today it's been exactly a year since the big move from Nansensgade to Schleppegrellsgade.
I would have liked to do a huge month-by-month post documenting the last year and all the progress we've made, but, as usual, i don't really have the time.

One year ago i would have laughed if anyone had told me that we still wouldn't be completely finished with working on the shop on our first birthday, but at that time none of us knew how many things could possibly go wrong.
And considering the amount of crap we've been through, i actually think the shops current condition (which is "almost done" and "totally awesome") is pretty impressive.
I don't even mind waiting a few more months with the opening party!

Like we have for the past year, we're still going to flea markets all the time, this is one of our latest finds

And this is what it looks like in our amazing new work room

 And just so ya'll have something pretty to look at, here's the worlds most giant armpit tattoo, by Eckel

Alright, i'm gonna go celebrate our big day by scrubbing some tubes...
Yay?

Stolen diamonds

Ok, this is embarrassing, but i have actually been working on this post for a week now.
Not constantly, of course, but on and off.
So much keeps happening at the shop, so every time i'm about to hit "publish" i remember this one thing i need pictures of, and then i decide to wait.
Well it ends here!

On Sunday, and that's last Sunday, not the one we just had, our glorious new wallpaper was put up in the work room.
That room never really became what we'd hoped for the first time around, and in comparison to the other rooms it just seemed a little too... not us.
And with Nick leaving we needed to do some major remodeling anyway, so we decided to go all out.
We sold the old desks, ordered some wallpaper from our favorite wallpaper pushers, bought wood for the paneling and convinced our painters and carpenters to do the actual dirty work for us.
Morten already did the paneling on Thursday, so everything was ready to be painted and wallpapered up.

Fancy

Poor Morten, trying to tame the crooked walls

 Me, Allan and Eckel started the day by going to the flea market to get some new, old furniture and while we did that, our two trusty painters got started on the wallpapering and painting.

There was quite a lot to be done, and at one point it looked like there wouldn't be enough wallpaper for the whole thing, but you know our painters; even when they're wrong they're right!

So they made it with only scraps to spare and it looked amaaaazing.

In progress

Stolen diamonds... no, really

 

We put our marks on the wall before the wallpaper came up...

... this will be there FOREVER!

Everyone joined in

Remember this?

The following Sunday, yesterday (or day before since it's technically Tuesday i guess) the painters finished the black panels and the red wall.
It looks so amazing and i can't wait to get stuff on the walls and make the room come together.
Epic is not too big a word.

The red wall

Eckel started on his corner today 

The other rooms are getting small makeovers as we go along too, here's what the office looks like now

The small orange couch now lives in the drawing room... off limits, as it should be

Oh, and tattoos still happen here too, here's one that Eckel did of Danish national treasure, Lars Von Trier (i'm sure you're all very nice, but if you don't know him, we can't be friends)

 

I'll be back with more work room pictures as soon as things are looking a little less chaotic than they are now!