Las Vegas model Sabina Kelley back judging tattoos on ‘Best Ink’
Just as you’d never want to hear Simon Cowell struggle to hit the high notes, you should probably back away, slowly, if Sabina Kelley ever picks up a needle and ink.
Sometimes it’s best to let Those Who Can’t judge.
“I could never be a tattoo artist, because I draw like a 2-year-old,” she admits. “But I know what’s good and what’s bad on tattoos. I’ve been around it all my life.”
The heavily inked, Las Vegas-based pinup model is back for a second season of critiquing artists on “Best Ink” (10 p.m. Wednesday, Oxygen). She’s joined by a new host in rocker Pete Wentz and two local contestants: Derek Rubright of Vegas Ink and DJ Tamble of Bad Apple Tattoo Co.
“I’ve been impressed with both of their work,” Kelley says. But she’s not surprised. “All the artists that we have on the show are really good. It’s not like some random Joe Shmoe off the street. They’re picking real artists.”
Each week, contestants compete in a Flash Challenge, applying their art to everything from guitars to airplanes to the side of a six-story building from which they dangle. Then, in the Ink Challenge, they’re paired with clients (aka “skins”) to more permanently showcase their skills.
It’s like a gnarlier, ouchier “Project Runway.”
Even with a year’s experience to fall back on, the hardest part for Kelley remains having to be “totally and brutally honest” with the contestants.
“I’m a pretty nice person,” she says. “So to be real harsh on people is kinda hard for me sometimes. But I definitely learned.”
With $100,000 and a cover story in Tattoo magazine on the line for the best of the dozen artists, Kelley has high standards for a winner: being well-versed in numerous styles, listening to the skins and delivering what they want, and providing clean lines and great body placement.
“The whole complete package, not just being able to do a great tattoo,” she explains. “They have to do it consistently.”
Kelley may not be able to give a good tattoo to save her life, but she’s been on the receiving end of enough of them to know what she likes.
She’s covered shoulders-to-wrists in skulls, bones, cherries and all manner of hearts and flowers. Most of her back is filled in. Her lettered knuckles spell out “HAUS WIFE.” In some cases, even her tattoos have tattoos.
“I just love the look of them,” Kelley says. “Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always been attracted to them.”
But the 35-year-old Ventura, Calif., native waited until she was 20 to get her first: a horseshoe with a swallow, the number 13, flames and roses.
She wasn’t allowed to have any during her 2½-year stint as a “Jubilee!” showgirl, so Kelley went under the needle before she started dancing at Paris’ famed Moulin Rouge. She chose the back of her neck so the ink would be easier to hide, but that didn’t exactly placate her new bosses.
“They were pissed when I got there,” she recalls.
To be fair, the tattoo isn’t what you’d call demure. It looks to be about the size of a fist. But the planning involved helps illustrate the care that goes into each of her illustrations.
After carefully considering each tattoo and working on its design with an artist, the admittedly “very, very picky” model has been known to spend days with the result drawn in place to make certain she approves.
Kelley realizes most customers don’t take that approach. In fact, she’s banking on it.
“I think with a lot of the TV shows that are going on right now, it’s making tattoos look like, ‘Oh, this is a cool thing to do,’ ” she says. “And I don’t think people are really thinking about what they’re getting or what they’re doing. They’re just doing it to be cool.
“I think a lot of people are gonna be regretting their tattoos down the road.”
To that end, she runs Bombshell Tattoo Removal inside the Hart & Huntington Tattoo Co. at the Hard Rock Hotel.
Kelley, who’s been back in Las Vegas for eight years, knew she couldn’t work as a model forever. Wanting a Plan B career in the tattoo world, she went to school to learn how to remove them.
Tribal tattoos and names are her biggest moneymakers.
As of now, she’s only there one day a week, by appointment only. But while she’ll someday make a living removing other people’s regrets, Kelley swears that’s a route she’d never follow.
“Some of them I don’t think are the greatest in the world,” she says of her own tattoos. “But I would never get rid of them, because it was like a time and place in my life, you know, and it’s memories.”
When Kelley was first getting inked, tattoos still had the power to shock. Now, seemingly every soccer mom and sorority girl has at least one.
“I know! I hate it,” she says, laughing.
But while their ubiquity should make her feel more accepted than ever, Kelley says she still gets “crazy looks” whenever she travels internationally or visits smaller cities.
Her parents hate her ink. “They think I ruined myself,” she reveals.
And while her career seems as much a result of her tattoos than despite them, Kelley says they remain an obstacle in her transition into high-fashion and couture modeling, as well as more television work.
Having made a name for herself in the alternative world, she’s starting to feel pigeonholed.
“That’s the hardest part,” Kelley admits. “I can do so much, but everyone automatically looks at me a certain way because of the tattoos.
“Until they know me and until they really look at what I do. Then they’re, like, ‘Oh, wow.’ And then they see it as something special.”
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.
