This blog is a good opportunity for me to reminisce about the fun times I spent traveling around the country with my friends. I've been lucky enough to be able to make tattoos every day while traveling around enjoying the excitement of live music and meeting new people in a different city every night. Certain moments of traveling have definitely been a lot easier than others though. Early in my career I spent a lot of time traveling in a van as well as bus, good and bad weather, good and bad shows to go along. Its a pretty amazing right of passage to look back at this point in my life. I spent a good bit of time and many tours with a group of really awesome guys that were in a band named Halifax. I was pretty young around this time, to me just a kid from south Georgia having fun and enjoying the opportunity to be traveling around the country tattooing and hanging around some fun guys from California playing Pop Rock n Roll tunes for kids that were loving it. We were all growing up together and really enjoying it. It's amazing to be able to watch a band grow, not only as artists, but more importantly as people. It is more than just making a tattoo sometimes.
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A few years after I began tattooing I also found myself taking advantage of some pretty unique opportunities to travel around the country with my friends and make some cool tattoos along the way. I like to call it "Tattouring", mainly because most of the friends I have been traveling with play music and like to bring me along on their tours to tattoo them and their crew members and the other bands on the tour as well. It all began with my friends in a band named From First to Last, on their first big headlining tour, many years ago, and continued to snowball into a list of many bands that I now have the pleasure of calling my friends and take me out on their tours to make tattoos for them. "I never imagined myself to be in a place like this, tattouring wasn't a job I could sign up to have one day, it just happened and I've always been grateful when someone invites me to join them into their lives and into their homes on the road. Thats a big deal to me because most of these guys don't trust very many people in their lives, and to be honest I haven't either. So it's cool that we find ways to connect and respect each other as both artists and as people." -Craig Beasley The picture below is of myself tattooing the inner lip of Sonny Moore, the former singer for the band From First to Last, which I was on the road tattooing with for other members of the band. At the time of doing this tattoo, I remember asking Sonny what the meaning of the word was, his reply to me was, "I don't know, just a word I made up that I want to use one day." At the time I didn't think too much of it other than that I was happy to make his first tattoo for him. It took me a long time to realize that people are the same, but yet so different. In the moment of meeting someone for the first time, you have no idea where that person has been and you have no idea where that person will go. The word I tattooed that day in the back of the tour bus was "Skrillix" I'm very grateful and honored to have spent many years traveling with these guys. I learned a lot and the friendships built with and through these guys are timeless.
I began tattooing around August of 2002 and life has not been the same ever since. I knew from that moment forward my life would never be the same. I love this opportunity that I've been given to make something new for someone different every day and appreciate all the people I've met and become friends with along the way as well. I love collecting tattoos and what they have done for me on a personal level and I love trying to give people a positive, life changing piece of art to wear and gain confidence with in life. It's more than just a tattoo and Thank You for choosing me! The next few tattoos are all older tattoos that I made over 10 years ago, each of these at points in my life that I feel like were very monumental for me. This tattoo of an asian influenced phoenix was tattooed by myself, Craig Beasley sometime around the year of 2004/2005 and it took about 20 or so hours to make this tattoo. I really enjoyed the experience of making this tattoo, I learned a lot during the process, and this tattoo has since become somewhat of a common subject for me to tattoo for many other people as well, but never the same. This Lion was another tattoo I made a long time ago, I think around the year 2006 or so. Another tattoo in which I learned a lot from and had a lot of fun with. We made this tattoo while traveling on tour with Fall Out Boy, it was done on a really good guy that was working with the band at the time. This tattoo tells the Egyptian story of Osiris, Isis, and Seth. I made this tattoo around the year 2006 and learned quite a lot during this process. Not only about art and tattooing, but myself and people, as well as growth with your client and the entire process. I really enjoy the style and concept of this.
I began Monument Tattoos in 2010 with the help of my amazing family and friends. In the beginning it was meant to only be a small private studio, but over the years has grown to become so much more than that. We are located in the amazing capital city of Tallahassee, Florida at 1233 Monroe St. I consider this Monument Tattoos to be a home away from home and a proud work of art in itself. When we found this location in 2015, I could see a vision immediately and the process began.
With the help of friends and family, we made something very special to me and I love spending time here making tattoos with my friends and clients. Visit the studio page and website to see more. I am a proud husband and father to the Beasley Bunch.
My wife, Heidi, and I have 4 amazing children together and we are trying to enjoy every bit of life. Please follow our family adventures through our page on Youtube if you would like to see more. |
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