Quality Temporary Tattoos

February 26, 2013 6:41 AM

Is it possible to buy affordable temporary tattoos online?

Ok, so I am going to an event soon, and we were throwing around the idea of having some temporary tattoos with some logos on them. Nothing too fancy. They don't need to last too long (a night or two would be great). I have searched online and ebay for these and was shocked at the prices. I ordered one from ebay from a seller as a test, but they were printing their tattoos on printer tattoo paper that left a clear film over the tattoo and it looked bad.

That being said, does anyone know of a place that does "decent" quality temporary tattoos, that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? Is this even possible?? I am starting to think it is.

Just curious.

posted by dbirchum to clothing, beauty, & fashion (10 answers total)

While I can't recommend a place by name (it's been a few years), my experience with buying custom temporary tattoos is that there is a price break in quantity. For quality, oddly enough, you're going to buy 1000 of them. In that range they will run somewhere between .02 and .10 each depending on the size.

The tattoos are cheap per tat, but yeah, it's a thousand, so you'll spend from $20 to $100 per set.
posted by plinth at 6:54 AM on February 26

Hi.
Yes, thats what I noticed as well. I have seen a lot of places online that have minimum order quantities of 1000 or 500. I mean, I could order as many as 50 (which would be 40 more than I ever need), as long as I could get 50 at an affordable price.
posted by dbirchum at 7:24 AM on February 26

Do you just need 10 tattoos of the same design? Or do you really want to custom design and print 10 temporary tattoos with your logo?

I'm trying to understand the necessity of only needing 10 personalized tattoos. If you explain the purpose, we might be able to think outside the box.

If you just need 10 great temporary tattoos to somehow identify you, try Tattly. You could even get a bunch of letters and spell out your message / company name.
posted by barnone at 7:48 AM on February 26

Hi,

Sorry. We are looking for our sports team logo. Therefore, we would be looking at 10 of the same team logo printed. Hope that helps.
posted by dbirchum at 8:03 AM on February 26

I've never used this site, but they claim to be affordable for small runs of custom temporaries: Stray Tats. They don't give a price, though, so you'd need to go through the "create a tat" to get a quote.
posted by firei at 8:09 AM on February 26

Hi,
Thanks. StrayTats was one of the first places I tried. I am not sure of their prices, as I quickly saw on their website that its $30 to ship to Canada (outside of the tattoo price).
posted by dbirchum at 8:21 AM on February 26

You could probably get a good quality custom tattoo from Etsy. This Etsy shop (I have never used them, so I can't recommend: they are just the very first one I found) does small orders of custom designs.
posted by fireandthud at 8:34 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

If the logo is fairly simple and traceable you might be able to make this DIY temporary tattoo method work well.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:51 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

This tattoo shop manufactures temporary tattoos. They're located just outside Toronto. I don't have any experience with their temporary tattoos, but I've been in the shop and they seem to be pretty legit. Their website is very customer-oriented.
posted by melissa at 10:16 AM on February 26

For only 10 tattoos I'd just create a stencil and use tattoo pens or Temptu tattoo paints to apply it. Because to get a decent price and quality you're going to have to go for bulk quantity, which it sounds like won't work for you. Unless you want to order 1000, wear the 10 at the event, and then have a ton left over to give away to people who want to show their team spirit?
posted by rhiannonstone at 12:15 PM on February 26