More than ink at Toad and Jaguar

Published 1:30 am Thursday, April 16, 2026

At Vashon Island’s newest tattoo studio, getting inked is meant to feel less like a transaction and more like an experience.

Toad and Jaguar Tattoo, one of just a few tattoo studios on the island, opened in Vashon Village in July 2025 and is built around the idea that tattooing should be both artful and intentional.

For owner Tyler Kaltreider, that means translating a process he first honed in painting — one where each work emerged from prolonged, high-intensity meditation — into tattooing, a medium where the end result is carried on someone’s skin for life.

“Instead of the residue of the meditation being the painting, you have this tattoo on this person that then goes around with them for the rest of their life,” Kaltreider said. “The limited amount of time we have making it, it just feels really focused.”

That sentiment helps to guide the ethos of Toad and Jaguar Tattoo: tattooing is both permanent and personal, and needs to be done mindfully.

Combining Kaltreider’s artistry as both an oil painter and tattoo artist, with his wife and the studio’s co-owner Alexis Czaplinski’s background in mental health as a registered nurse, the couple set out to create a space that had the high-art feel of a gallery, while also paying special attention to the experience itself of getting a tattoo.

That’s because the experience is often emotionally-charged, and the process itself is a big part of how someone will feel about their tattoo, Kaltreider said.

“It can be painful, and can release some emotions,” Kaltreider said. “Small things, and set and setting can have a large impact on different people.”

Using what he’s learned from Czaplinski, Kaltreider says he focuses on ongoing and careful communication with his clients.

When the experience is positive, Kaltreider says it can be transformative.

Covering up a scar or another existing tattoo can turn something negative into something exciting and new.

And by highlighting certain parts of the body with a chest piece, leg tattoos, or a sleeve, Kaltreider says new ink can have a big impact on someone’s self-esteem.

“So many people, for whatever reason, dislike certain parts of their body or feel weird about it,” Kaltreider said. “Then as they get tattoos that they really like, it totally changes their perception of themselves and that part of their body.”

Prior to opening Toad and Jaguar Tattoo, the pair travelled around the Western United States in a truck camper and Sprinter van for more than three years — where Kaltreider had a mobile tattoo studio — looking for a place to set up a permanent location.

“Mini-mooning” in Vashon after marrying in 2024, Kaltreider said the island and its embedded community of artists felt like a fit.

“It just kind of rolls at a pace that we like, and we came across an extraordinary number of very friendly people in a short time of being here,” Kaltreider said. “It just kind of felt like home.”

The studio has attracted a crowd of locals, but many of Kaltreider clients come from his nomadic days as a van-lifer, who travel from across the country to get tattooed by him — drawn to his psychedelic, surrealist style defined by mushroom-headed characters, geometric patterns and trippy botanicals.

Kaltreider says this “absurd” imagery speaks to the irrationality of the outside world, paradoxically able to provide sharper meaning than something more direct.

It’s also a nod to his interest in psychedelics. The shop’s name is a reference to “The Toad and the Jaguar,” an ethnographic field study on psychedelics.

Kaltreider says his tattooing style was born out of his natural drawing style, stylized to stand the test of time on skin.

The challenge of adapting a concept to fit the body’s natural landmarks and contour its natural curves, to where it looks like it was “supposed to be there” is a part of what makes the medium so rewarding for him, Kaltreider said.

The intense focus, the stillness, the constant check-ins — it all comes down to collaboration, Kaltreider said. Turning an idea into a lived experience is what makes the work truly fulfilling.

“It’s so many things wrapped into one,” Kaltreider said. “It’s really rewarding when it goes really well, and we’re both really pleased with the outcome.”

Toad and Jaguar Tattoo is located at 17205 Vashon Hwy SW #B-1-E. For more information or to book an appointment, visit toadandjaguar.com.