Despite the various claims you might see on the internet for creams and other tattoo products, it’s near impossible to get a vegan tattoo or vegan tattoo numbing product.
Here’s what you need to know about vegan claims in the tattoo industry.
Learning to tattoo on pig skin
Modern tattoo practice mats are often now made of silicone. Yet older tattoo mats were made of pig skin.
Older tattoo artists often learned to tattoo on pig skin. Pig skin mats are still used today.
So there’s no guarantee that the artist you’re choosing to be tattooed by hasn’t learned to tattoo on animal skin. Or that the ink they’re using doesn’t contain animal byproducts.
The problem here is that to be truly ‘vegan’ something can’t have been tested on animals. So your tattooist is likely not vegan.
I know my tattooist isn’t vegan. And he’s probably even dreaming of a steak or a hamburger while tattooing. At least that’d be my guess by how much he loves inflicting pain.
Are tattoo numbing creams vegan?
Despite some websites claiming that certain numbing products are vegan, the active ingredients aren’t vegan.
Lidocaine, Prilocane and Epinephrine are pharmaceutical drugs. They were developed and tested on animals. Sure you could get some hippy numbing cream with all natural ingredients. But then they won’t numb anything.
Those vegan creams might actually be vegan. But they’re also a rip off. A numbing cream that doesn’t actually numb the surface to be tattooed is worthless.
You only need to look at certain beauty sites to see tattoo numbing cream articles written by people who have never used those creams. Those beauty sites will claim that creams with Lidocaine are ‘vegan’. Forgetting the pharmaceutical component is not vegan.
They’ll also claim that added vitamin E is worth spending money on. Because vitamin E has been known to help with swelling. Vitamin E in a tattoo numbing cream is worthless when compared with Epinephrine. And the vitamin E in those numbing creams doesn’t actually do anything.
Vitamin E gets pushed out by blood and plasma. And wiped off by the tattooist each time he cleans the tattoo. Plus the layers of skin to which the vitamin E is applied gets shredded during the abrasive tattoo process.
But that shouldn’t surprise anyone. That the vegan cream isn’t actually vegan and the vitamin E doesn’t work when compared to Epinephrine. Selling people products for a markup by using the terms ‘vegan’ and ‘all natural’ is commonplace.
If a marketer calls something vegan, or says it’s all natural, everybody pays more. Because nobody wants to hurt the poor (and delicious) little piggies.
The Best Tattoo Numbing Cream
Instead of looking for vegan tattoos and vegan tattoo numbing creams you should be looking for the most effective numbing cream on the market today.
Because the whole purpose of a numbing cream is to numb the surface to be tattooed. Without interfering with the ink by having a whole bunch of added marketing junk.
We’ve tested the best tattoo numbing cream available on a brutal blackout sleeve. You can see the review here with actual proof that I used the numbing cream.
How To Compare Tattoo numbing Creams?
That’s the other thing you need to be aware of. Most people making lists of ‘best numbing creams’ haven’t actually used the creams. They’re just trying to sell you Amazon junk.
If you want to compare tattoo numbing creams what you’re looking for is Lidocaine, Prilocaine and Epinephrine.
Lidocaine and Prilocaine are the primary numbing agents. And they’re both limited by law, to a maximum of 5%. Epinephrine slows swelling but is most often the cause when clients ‘rash out‘. Tattoo artists hate creams with epinephrine.
The greater the percentages of Lidocaine or Prilocaine in a tattoo numbing cream, the better it works. The higher they are to the 5% maximum, the more effective the cream will be and the less pain you’ll feel.
Compare the creams by the levels of those two ingredients. Not by the marketing terms used to sell numbing creams. I personally tune out to everything, but the actual ingredients and levels.
Because, if they’re advertised as all natural, vegan or containing added vitamins and minerals that’s just marketing spin. The people selling the creams are using those terms to make you pay more for a lesser product.
If you’re vegan, get yourself a great tattooist and the best numbing cream available. Save the vegan products for aftercare. Because tattoo aftercare products don’t contain pharmaceuticals and can be vegan.
The best tattoo aftercare cream I’ve used, is Mad Rabbit. It’s what I’ve used on my tattoo sleeves. And Mad Rabbit is vegan. Plus it also smells fantastic.
