Mandurah tattoo shop owner Jade Wignall wins beauty award for laser ink removal clinic she opened next door

Opening a laser removal studio next door to a tattoo shop might seem counterintuitive – like opening a McDonalds next to a gym – but for Mandurah’s Jade Wignall it’s seen business boom.

While some come to Ms Wignall hoping to remove a tattoo they’ve come to regret, others simply want to make more room.

“A lot of people will want clearances on certain things like ex-partners’ names, wedding bands, that kind of stuff.

“But I didn’t realize when I first started that I wouldn’t just be removing badly done tattoos, they’re just really traumatising for the client”.

Ms Wignall said these tattoos usually come with reminders of hard times in her client’s lives.

“I have clients removing tattoos that are really well done that they spent thousands on, but the time that they got it was a really hard time in their life, whether there was a death, domestic violence, the loss of children, like really quite heavy things,” Ms Wignall said.

“Then the tears start coming, and when we get to the point of it being removed, they’re so overwhelmed.

“It’s actually such a good part of the job. I’m almost a little bit like a therapist.

“I hear a lot of really sad things, and it’s nice to give them a good result at the end and help them start a new chapter.”

“We get a few they want it faded to put something better over it,” Ms Wignall said.

“Or they’ve just run out of room. They’re heavily covered, and they’ll like remove sections to get something new that they want.”

Ms Wignall said she’s seen an upswing in clients wanting cosmetic tattoos removed.

“Eyebrow fashion is constantly changing, there’s been the block brows, the nice little thin ones, the strokes, the nano brows, and people are changing what they like and their face changes, and so we’re removing them,” Ms Wignall added.

“I don’t know anyone else in WA that offers that, so I went over to Melbourne to train and we do the lip blush tattoo removal because we’re seeing a lot of colour change.