We were lucky to catch up with Celli Villarreal recently and have shared our conversation below.

Celli, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

It was certainly a huge leap of faith and practicing radical acceptance for whatever the journery had in store for me to commit myself full time self-employed as an artist and esthetician. It has been the best most life altering decsion I ever made and I plan to keep riding out this artistic life eternally.

Celli, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My roots as an artist began with permanent makeup. PMU taught me to pay significant attention to precision which translated well creating clean lines when I dove into body art: Whether I am tattooing powder eye brows, lip blushing, freckles, or permanent eyeliner, there is little room for error. My mentor is from Ukraine with strong Russian roots; she demanded perfection and for that I will forever be grateful because it made me the strong artist I am today. I am beyond thankful to now be able to earn my total income completely from my creative work as a tattoo and permanent makeup artist. I also have been licensed as an ethetician for the last 6 years which has been a huge help in educating my clients to properly take care of their skin to heal with the most optimal results. I now offer all my services as both an artist and esthetician under my business name Beauty by Celli LLC within Brick House Tatto & Co. in Toledo, Oh. Brick House is such a unique space being an all female operated tattoo shop and has its spa license. Shout out to Jordyn Tinney for creating this space! We work closely together since I also manage the shop’s social media to spread our mission being a safe space for clients of all diversities. Something I am so proud of, and I think certainly sets me apart from other tattooers and beauty service providers, is that I dedicated my summer of 2021 to becoming a certified meditation practitioner and teacher. You never know what someone might be enduring outside of the shop, so I offer my services with intention. I want my clients to let go out whatever is happening outside of the shop walls for a bit and truly honor their time with me. Therefore, while my client’s stencil is drying I will. have my client pull positive affirmation cards to give them something positive to reflect on while I tattoo. Or before I begin skin services, I start with a short guided meditiation so my client can fully relax and ground down to recieve their facial. I am always trying to incorporate mindfulness where I can. I actually also offer guided meditations as stand alone services as well.
Mindfulness and spirituality lead me into oracle cards and offering oracle readings. I now blend those and offer “Psychic Tattoo Consultations” where I do an hour oracle reading on a client, and we follow it up discussing a design that reflects their reading. Oracle decks have taught me so much about intuition; most times when we feel stuck or are in need of guidance, our inner higher self already knows what we need most. I am honored to be able to facilitate the process for others to tap into their higher intuitive self with the help of my spirit guides.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I often get questioned, “how did you become a tattoo artist?” It has honestly been quite a long journey to get where I am today. I am a survivor of sexual trauma both in my childhod and in my early adulthood. Starting at 18, I definitely went down a dark path with heavy substance abuse and even facing serious legal trouble at one point. I hit rock bottom at 19 when I landed behind bars and was sentenced to house arrest and 3 years of probabtion. If I stayed out of trouble I could then have my record expunged a year after porbation ended. I remember just thinking, “how can I make this time pass as quickly as possible?” I told myself I would use that time to accomplish as much as I possibly could. I packed my bags, left Toledo, Oh and attended the Aveda Institute in Columbus, OH to become an esthetician. I continued my education with other certifications and even went to college at Columbus State for a bit. Life was great until the pandemic hit.
I was forced to be alone with my thought and I realized there was still a lot of inner child wounds that needed serious mending. I had a tough mental breakdown so I attended a trauma recovery program in Atlanta, GA in the summer of 2020 for 3 months where I could truly begin the recovery I needed with an offical diagnosis of PTSD. I moved back to Toledo to be with my family once I finished the program. In some ways I felt on a true path to understanding myself better being alone in a new environment for a few months but I also felt at another rock bottom. I never felt listened to and I was constantly being prescribed psych meds and bascially threatned that if I didn’t take those meds I would be kicked out of the program. It definitely made me look at our psychiatric industry in a whole new light as just another business. I craved radical change in my life. As someone who has loved makeup artisty since I was 12 years old, I came across permanent makeup on social media and decided it was something I wanted to pursue. I did my researchg on finding some of the best mentors in Ohio and worked hard as a server temporarily to gather funds to pay for that training.
Fast forward to where I am at today, sober more than I have ever been in my entire life and I am filled with so much gratitude to have this successful career and to be able to uplift my others with my unique services. I think at some point in my life I definitely want to dive into motivational speaking through podcatsts and public speeches.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

SHARE! It costs zero dollars to simply share your local art onto your feed on social media. The power of social media is incredible. I have been able to grow our following on our Brick House page from 1,400 when I first took over to now 3,379 followers from nothing but consistent posting; absolutely no paid advertisement! I think it’s important that our society remebers for those who earn a living from their art to honor their prescence and treat them with respect just as you would for any other ocupation no matter how prestigious it may be. We are all equal. I cannot tell you the number of times I have had a client no call no show or witness it happen to one of my coworkers, it’s disrectful of the artist’s time. We are human and understanding if a client needs to reschedule and we ask for healthy communication.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @INKEDBYCELLI
• Facebook: BEAUTY BY CELLI

Image Credits
These are photos taken by myself