Hope Henry, a 19-year-old,born and raised in Ear Falls, will be opening her own tattoo and piercing business on Saturday.
“I want to make it very gender-neutral space I’m hoping it will just be a very welcoming tattoo shop,” says Hope.
She has been into drawing since she was three years old. She is just starting out as a business but is above apprentice level. She will also be offering piercing services in a few weeks when the rest of her supplies arrives.
“I’m still learning, but I’m always going to work on a good outcome for my clients,” she says.
She started tattooing in 2021, practicing on fake skin models. She then moved up to tattooing herself in 2022.
“I’d sit there with my tattoo pedal shoved between my leg and tattoo my leg while flexing to press the pedal,” she says. “There were so many times when my boyfriend would walk in and be like, ‘yup yup you’re tattooing yourself again’.”
When she felt ready and more comfortable, she started doing tattoos on her family members.
“They obviously were rooting for me to get ‘er going,” says Hope. “My mom is my biggest supporter through it all, she has helped with the whole thing.”
Initially, after high school, she didn’t know what she wanted to do. It was her father that suggested she get into tattooing. So, she decided that tattooing was what she wanted to do for her career.
“He was like, ‘I always thought you’d be artist of some kind’, and that’s what sparked the idea,” says Hope.
Hope graduated high school early to be able to start her university work sooner. She then attended a university tattoo entrance course online from Alberta through the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave her all of the required certifications. There she also learned all of the necessary sanitation requirements that she would not have learned in an apprenticeship.
“I really didn’t want to be stuck doing something I wasn’t going to enjoy for the rest of my life,” says Hope.
She had wanted to do an apprenticeship in Winnipeg, but decided against doing so as the apprenticeship would be for a year and unpaid, she knew she wouldn’t be able to support herself while she did it while she was learning, which is why she began practicing on herself.
“Basically, I learned by how it felt doing it on myself, and if it felt wrong, I knew I needed to change something,” says Hope. “I’ve had tattoo’s done by other artists so I knew how it was supposed to feel.”
Hope has been working at the Ear Falls sawmill for over a year to be able to support herself and get the new business up and running. Amidst all the new business work, she has also been in the process of buying a house.
“Starting a new business has been stressful, but it’s been fun, the set up of my shop has been really fun.”
She likes to do a wide variety style from portraits, landscapes to animals. Her favourite style is to do creepy vibe art pieces.
“I really enjoy a creepy vibe to a drawing, I think it really makes it pop, but I can do pretty much anything anybody asks.”
On her own leg, she has tattooed some sea life, a centipede, frog, dinosaur and more. She’s done a realistic deer tattoo for her brother, and she’s done cherry blossoms and a dragonfly for her mother. She’s done some smaller fine line tattoos as well.
For the name of her shop, she had initially wanted something dark and witchy but didn’t want to take away from other nearby tattoo shops with a similar theme.
The name Valhalla Ink was instead inspired by a Viking theme.
“Valhalla was the only name that really fit what I’d wanted, so I went with that.”
Valhalla Ink and Piercing is located at the Beauty Barn in Ear Falls. Hope already has most of September booked, and part of October as well. She believes that after she is officially open and has done more tattoos, she’ll be able to showcase more of her work to the community and build her clientele.
