We are so excited to introduce our newest series: Main Street Moments. In 2023 we learned about the importance of telling the stories of our Main Street when we went to our annual conference. With this series we hope to share with you the small business owners who work in our Main Street district, the history behind some of our city’s oldest buildings, and the stories of some of our resident veterans.

We begin this journey with Eric Frost from 3 Little Birds Tattoo. His tattoo shop is unassuming from the outside but full of vibrant color and eclectic art on the inside. Anytime you walk in you are greeted with a “Hey, what’s up? How can I help you?” over the hum of a tattoo gun from one of the talented artists. I feel like you could spend hours inside Eric’s shop and still find new things among his artwork and decor that you didn’t notice before.

I had the pleasure of talking to Eric for a few minutes about his journey to becoming a tattoo artist and his upcoming Frost Festival on January 21st.

I’ve been drawing since, as far as I can remember. In elementary school was when I started, teachers were telling me that my art was good and putting things up in competitions. I won some college scholarships during  middle school and high school because of pieces that were submitted at local spots like the center and other places. So, after that, I went on college and earned a bachelor’s degree in graphic design. Once I was out of college, I didn’t want to do graphic design as much as tattooing. I just got an apprenticeship while in college, and tattooing was a lot more fun than graphic design.

The tattoo shop actually reached out to me for the apprenticeship, I had some friends who were trying to get into the industry and I would kind of pop into a shop and just kind of hang out with them.  While I was there, they could see me draw and then somebody came to me and said, “Hey, let me teach you how to tattoo.” And I said, “Okay, cool.”

There’s  that pressure at first to make sure you get it right. And there’s the learning curve just with any different medium, but this one’s more scary just because, yeah, it’s on somebody’s body, using a needle and making it permanent.

Previously, I was in downtown Kissimmee but I lived in St. Cloud. I wanted to move closer to home. I had issues with my last landlord, and I just happen to know Shane and Andy, who have the building to talk to them. It’s just happen to work out great. Right in the heart of downtown. It was kind of the same feel, the same atmosphere a little bit as Kissimmee, you know, not the hustle and bustle of being on 192 or anything like that. I kind of like being a little more hidden you know, that joy you got to find.

I still do do graphic design. Christmas is now over, but I do get commissioned for things during Christmas time a lot paintings and I did do some softball helmets. I’m working a lot with the FirePALS book boxes that are going around St. Cloud. I make sculptures as well. And then we have our biggest adventure right now is Frost Fest.

We’re gonna have 30 artists come out here and do a live painting  contest and setting up their work to sell. They will also be given the canvas which is going to be completed by the end of the show. It’ll be judged for first, second and third place prize. We have trophies that we’ll be handing out and prizes obviously. We have three bands, local bands that will be performing two amazing food trucks that will be there and a kid zone that will be next door at the American Legion in their little Quonset pavilion. We’re gonna have face painting and definitely have different crafts and art projects for them to complete. We will have  kids movies displaying through the whole time.

This event is free for the public. It’s actually free for the artists too we actually added the last moment I got some help from the city and got a few things waived and saved us some stuff. So we pass that on to our artists and our vendors and we just wanted to make a good fun show.