A delicate peony rests upon an arm, a grandmother’s signature taken from a check in her scrawled writing, a hummingbird flutters on a bicep, “do it afraid” etched on the body of a triathlon athlete.
All of these elements bring together a memory — a connection. Stories, love, strength and tears all strung together with one common thread, Cody Delph.
For the 32-year-old Indiana native, these stories of people bring together his livelihood: fine line tattooing.
Delph’s tattoo shop is not the typical tattoo parlor that one might think of. It’s not filled with skulls, tattoos on the walls or loud music. Instead, this shop is filled with earth tones, plants, soft white chairs and Hozier playing softly on the radio.
This aesthetic was carefully curated, because not only is this business a tattoo shop, it is also an esthetician business.
Delph and his wife Savana Rae own Ivy and Grace Brow Boutique, located in Lexington, Kentucky, with another location in Danville, Kentucky. Here they offer permanent makeup, eyebrow microblading and fine line tattoos.
What used to be a small business has grown immensely since they first opened in 2020. Starting essentially from scratch in a 100-square-foot room to now owning two locations and being open for four years, this couple beams with grit and determination.
Rae, 29 years old and originally from Sacramento, California, came to Kentucky at only 17 years old in 2013, leaving her family behind in California. She started her cosmetology journey in 2017 and graduated cosmetology school in 2018.
Then during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rae took her stimulus checks and started taking training courses for microblading, a semi-permanent tattooing technique used on eyebrows, as well as doing facials as a side gig. From there her business took off running at full steam with Delph quitting his job to support Rae.
“There came a point in time where it was like, I think I would be happier supporting my wife and supporting her business than some other person,” Delph said.
Rae prides herself on starting this business from the ground up, she said.
“We have put in so much blood, sweat and tears . . . we’ve worked really hard for this,” Rae said.
For Rae, she is always looking for something greater, she said when she is comfortable it means it is time for her to grow.
“Whenever I get comfortable doing something, I’m like ‘OK I need to do something that puts me in a situation to where I don’t feel comfortable whatsoever,’ because I know that’s the only way I can grow,” Rae said.
For Delph, before becoming a tattoo artist and business owner, he worked as an embalmer for 10 years. While one may assume that this career path was an easy choice for Delph or a job he always wanted to do, he calls this choice “God driven.”
“It was this deep instilled passion that came out of nowhere . . . your average person couldn’t handle those situations that you see in that environment,” Delph said.
With being an embalmer, Delph cared for people’s bodies and prepared them for their afterlives. Now with his job as a tattoo artist, Delph has brought a new sense of meaning to lives back on Earth.
“In my previous job, death was final, when we died that was the end,” Delph said. “But now I get to see this whole new element to where they (clients) are bringing me grandpa’s writing, grandma’s writing and they (loved ones) still have a voice after death.”
Delph describes these sweet sentiments as artifacts in time or “crumbs” of our lives that people leave behind.
“I had a young lady bring in an old check . . . it’s a check from like 1982, but it had her grandma’s signature,” Delph said.
He was able to incorporate what looks to the naked eye, a regular check, a boring mundane piece of paper that people carry in their wallets into a heartfelt tattoo.
To Delph, this check was something the grandmother had left behind, a “crumb” of her life. To this woman, it was a piece of her grandmother she wanted forever etched onto her body. Delph will now forever be woven into this woman’s story.
Now as a tattoo artist, he has had the opportunity to create tattoos that honor those same loved ones that he cared for during his previous job as an embalmer.
“I would say more than four times this has happened,” Delph said. “Of course you don’t bring it up, but it’s really cool.”
Delph is also a fully self-taught tattoo artist; he started practicing on silicone skins at home, “doodling” pictures and working on getting to know the tattoo machines and the rhythm of tattooing, he said.
His first tattoo on real skin was on a UK triathlon athlete in May 2021. This “do it afraid” tattoo, in all lowercase times new roman typewriter font, was tattooed by Delph who said he was “scared as Hell.”
But there he sat in 2021, only a year after he and his wife’s business had opened, gripping his tattoo gun and shaking, he said, he started a new journey.
“I was like ‘how fitting is this’ I’m in a new journey, and I’m scared to death, and let’s do this,” Delph said.
Still remembering the font and exact point size, Delph truly never forgets a client. He said he keeps a mental log of all the pieces he has done in his career.
“I pretty much remember every piece, it’s kind of crazy,” Delph said.
While Delph said he never thought this was a career path he would take, he has found joy in being creative.
“I would have never thought of myself as an artistic person, but the more I dive into this creative field, it’s like ‘oh my gosh I really do possess this (ability),’” Delph said. “I appreciate it now, because I didn’t know what it took to create something . . . for it to be a whole piece.”
For the business as a whole, this couple wanted to create something comfortable and a peaceful place away from home, Delph said.
Mother and father to two children, both under the age of 5 years old, Delph and Rae really have no time to themselves, but this duo wants the best for their children and to provide a life for them that they didn’t have growing up.
“I want to be able to have a business that I am proud of and also have it support my kids and my family,” Rae said. “Everything we do is for our kids . . . we wanted to change the script.”
With Rae’s parents not building and prioritizing generational wealth for her and Delph growing up bouncing around from house to house as a child, the couple wants to be better for their children than what they had.
Rae said she is the first person in her family to buy a piece of land and wants to keep that land for generations to come. She said this purchase is a “huge deal” to her and her family.
“There was nothing left behind for us. So, it’s like, how can we create a generational thing for our kids,” Delph said.
However, this life they are building is no easy task, Rae feels that as a woman she has pressure on her to accomplish multiple different tasks in her life, this is why her business motto is “self care isn’t selfish.”
“As a woman in general . . . you get kick back. If you’re a full time business owner you get kick back, you get kick back if you’re a mother, just working at home or staying at home, there’s so many different pressures on women,” Rae said. “So I feel like self care isn’t selfish . . . because you should take care of yourself regardless of what position you’re in.”
One client that stuck with Rae who truly embodies this message is a mother who had to sacrifice everything she had to take care of her son.
This mother had to make the decision to be her son’s primary caregiver after a military accident and make the decision to step away from her family and three daughters for six months while looking over him in a hospital, Rae said.
While taking care of her son, this mother had no sense of normalcy, so when she stepped into Rae’s shop to finally do something for herself, Rae said this woman shared her story and broke down into tears.
However, Rae was able to give this mother a new look, with a completely new set of eyebrows, and afterwards the mother cried for 30 minutes because she was so thankful for Rae, she said.
“It was a beautiful thing for me to give back to somebody who has been through so much because . . . at that point it comes down to her feeling a sense of normalcy,” Rae said.
Making an impact is the whole reason Rae works in her career field, she said, and she takes pride in knowing she can give someone a sense of stillness during a chaotic period of their life.
Through Delph’s perseverance and positive outlook on life and Rae’s willingness to grow and be better constantly, this couple hopes to keep growing as a business and as a family. They hope this business they have created will leave a legacy for their daughter Adalynn and son Sawyer.
