Lisa's Story

Lisa Henning Botched Ink saline tattoo removal

Read our Company Story

My name is Lisa Henning, and I founded Botched Ink because of the difficulties I faced as a technician in the cosmetic tattooing industry. In 2012 I trained to offer permanent makeup, as a full-time technician working from my home studio. Over the next few years, the industry expanded, and technician hopping began. The quality of work started to vary wildly, and clients couldn’t always spot a technician who had their best interests at heart. Staying with the same technician is just like staying with the same hair colourist

Lots of potential clients had visible pigment from previous treatments, and I knew that for many of them adding new pigment wouldn’t look good for long. I needed more options, so I took several removal courses and began experimenting, starting with salt and saline in 2013, then acid or alkaline solutions. I understood the logic of how these products worked, if I could explain things properly to a client, if I could fix that old pigment, I would gain a new long term client, right?

Here's where I learned some hard lessons: Clients don’t want removal, they want you to add more pigment, and the few who said yes rarely returned for another treatment. Removal was painful, downtime longer and homecare harder than expected, and results were not quick. The vision of getting the new brows they wanted felt too far away, this detour wasn't an option

I ended up seriously disillusioned with removal, and it faded to a treatment I barely spoke about, preferring to say no to clients with existing work that wasn’t at least 70% faded out. It hurt the pocket, but the conscience remained honourable. I tried to educate clients along the way, though knew many were so desperate to have nice brows, someone would take their money and give them brows for now, not thinking how they'd look a year from now. Understanding how pigment fades comes with experience

Roll on to 2017 and the need for removal was growing, but I’d also grown confident in my skills and knowledge. I’d become a trainer, developing my own dry tattooing training course, a treatment to improve scars and stretch marks which I’d also been offering since 2014, and I'd finally got access to saline removal products I felt were worth a try. I worked on my bedside manner and more clients were saying yes to removal, even though it was still as painful, and all those other things clients don’t like!

I decided I'd be able to help more technicians if I wrote my own saline tattoo removal training course, and I travelled around the country for the next year and more offering workshops, tattoo removal in the morning, colour theory in the afternoon! But something was missing, I had more to offer, I knew what needed to change to make saline tattoo removal even better

Developing the Botched Ink removal solution was surprisingly simple. We needed to make treatments less painful, and everything else easier and less risky.  Botched Ink is the result of all I've learned in this industry, the logic of tattoo removal, working with damaged skin, the treatments clients accept and understand to get the results they want

Clients are learning more about the treatments they've had, but it’s still early days in terms of their knowledge of removal developed for microblading and permanent makeup.  Within our industry I am so very proud of how widely known and highly regarded Botched Ink has become since our launch in January 2019. We’ve trained 100s of technicians around the world, and their clients are experiencing wonderful results fixing unwanted work. In an industry where removal is the fastest growing trend, we've found our place and we're here to stay. Botched Ink is the removal brand that’s remembered and delivers on expectations

It's the Botched Ink website that brings everything together, easily discovered by potential clients asking Google questions that concern them. Our head office team offers personal support, and our 100s of technician reviews and listings on our Find a Tech map demonstrate that being a part of the Botched Ink team is something every technician should consider a necessity

Experience as a Technician

  • August 2012 - Permanent makeup training
  • April 2013 - Salt and saline training
  • June 2013 - MCA Microneeding training
  • Other removal courses in 2014, 2015 and 2018

From 2012 to 2018 I worked as a full time technician, specialising in the above treatments. 

In 2015 I completed my teacher training, Award in Education & Training, and began offering Dry Tattooing training, and later Saline Tattoo Removal and the Microblading to Machine® conversion course 

Experience as a saline tattoo removal (STR) trainer, and developing Botched Ink®:

  • March 2017 wrote STR course as a trainer and distributor for another brand
  • December 2017, Botched Ink® domains and trademark
  • January 2018, started offering own non-branded STR course
  • 2018 developing and testing Botched Ink®
  • January 2019, launched Botched Ink® in UK
  • November 2019, launched Botched Ink® worldwide via distributors
  • October 2020 split .com and .co.uk websites
  • February 2021, pulled all distributors
  • Made Botched Ink exclusive to our trained techs only
  • Holding stock ourselves in America, Canada, Australia and United Kingdom

Achievements:

  • May 2019 won the award for Industry Innovation at Micropigmentation UK
  • Worldwide .com website top of Google searches for STR
  • 150-200 people visit this website each day! 
  • More than 1000 officially trained Botched Ink® technicians
  • Since 2019, more than 50% of our techs are still active in 2022 and 2023, they can be found on our Find a Tech map
  • Building a strong team of supported removal specialists!

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