Custom Tattoos in Mesa, AZ

Last updated 2 September 2026

Custom tattoos at Tagz, built from your idea

You have a picture in your head, or a reference on your phone, or a rough sketch you did at your kitchen table. That is where a custom tattoo starts.

We are at 2735 E Main St, Suite 9, right on East Main in Mesa, just east of where the Main Street light rail line ends at Gilbert Road, a few minutes east of the Temple and the downtown breweries. Bring the idea in and we will figure out how to put it on skin so the whole thing holds together.

Our owner built Tagz and put the team together. Black and grey realism is his lane, and it is what most people drive in for. He posts the work, healed and fresh both, on TikTok and YouTube at @agtattoos.

Watch some of it before you come in. A healed piece from the artist who would be doing yours tells you what you actually need to know.

Same day, or worth a consult

How a custom piece goes

A custom piece starts as a conversation and gets built to your body in steps, never copied line for line off a photo.

1. Free consult. Sit with the artist who would do the work, not a front desk. Bring references or just the idea, and talk size, placement, and style.
2. Stencil. The artist draws it up and pulls a stencil. You check the flow in the mirror and move it until it sits right, before anything goes in.
3. Linework. The first session maps the outline so the piece reads as one thing instead of a stack of separate tattoos crowded together.
4. Shading and saturation. Later sittings build the depth in passes, with healing time between, so the skin takes each pass clean.

Ready to talk through your piece?

Call or Text the Shop or request a free consult

The consult

Consults do not cost anything. Sit down with the artist who would do the work, not a front desk, and bring whatever you have. A photo, a couple of references you like the feel of, a name and a font, or just the idea in your own words.

We talk size, placement, and style first. A quarter-size fine line piece on the inner wrist and a black and grey half sleeve are two different conversations, and both start the same way.

You tell us what you want. We tell you what the skin will hold.

Placement matters more than people expect. Over bone and thin skin, the ribs, inner arm, elbow ditch, hands, back of the knee, the needle feels sharper and the design has to be drawn to fit the way the body moves.

Fleshier spots sit easier and take detail well. The artist redraws your reference around the spot you pick.

Your reference is already somebody else's tattoo

Most references that come through this door are already tattoos. Somebody saved a photo of a piece done on a different body, at a different size, by an artist working in a different style, and it looks perfect in the shot because it was fitted to that arm and nobody else's. Copy it line for line onto you and it stops working, because the thing it was built around is gone. So the artist is not tracing your reference. They are reading what you actually liked about it, the subject, the weight of the blacks, the way it wrapped, then rebuilding that for your body. Bring the picture. Just come ready to hear why yours will not look like it.

Aftercare in the Mesa heat

Mesa summers run past 110, and that matters for a fresh tattoo. Keep it out of direct sun and out of the pool while it settles. A new piece healing under a July afternoon on East Main is not the same as one healing in the fall, so we will walk you through the specifics for the season you get it in.

Our custom gallery shows a color cartoon coyote and a turtle character on calves. Other photos show a broken clock with gears on a shoulder and a crying mask across a chest. There is also a lighthouse with waves on an upper arm. If one catches your eye, bring that image and say what you like about it. A subject, a color choice or the shape of the piece gives the artist something specific to discuss at the free consult.

A reference from the shoulder photograph and one from the calf photograph are fitted to different parts of the body. Tell the artist where yours will go when you show the examples.

The consult section on this page explains that the artist redraws the reference for the chosen spot. You can bring several images you like the feel of, and point out the part of each you want discussed. The existing stencil step gives you a chance to check the angle and size in the mirror, then move it until it sits right.

Ray Wood's Google review gives a different starting point: he and his wife came in for their 20th anniversary tattoos. That review is the source of the real-job block already on this page. If you are planning something to mark your own anniversary, bring the idea in your own words, or a sketch. Our custom process starts there, with size and placement discussed before the drawing and stencil.

For an idea that involves covering older ink, bring the existing tattoo to the consult as well. Our cover-up guidance treats that old ink as part of the design constraint. The artist looks at it before discussing what can go over it. Ask for the quote on that piece during the consultation; this page already makes clear that the amount depends on the work and who does it. Small custom pieces and a full back or arm are scoped individually.

Directions to the shop from out of town are on the Gilbert, Chandler, Tempe, Scottsdale, Apache Junction and Queen Creek pages.