Stories we wear on our skin
London Tattoo Convention is fast approaching and we’re so excited! Come along and see us at the Things&Ink stand, where you can get a copy of Issue 8 The Illustration Issue with Danielle Rose as our cover star.
Poster by Theö Mindell, Spider Murphy’s Tattoo, USA
LondonEdge: A commercial trade show, forging youth-market trends while pushing the boundaries for established sub-culture fashion.
7th-9th September
Business Design Centre, Islington, London. N1 0QH
LondonEdge launched in 2000 is one of the longest serving fashion trade shows around. They showcase the crème de le crème of creative and lifestyle orientated fashion collections, the most exciting ready-to-wear street fashion there is! Representing everyone from fresh young designers to established global brands. The trade show hosts over 250 lifestyle labels including Iron Fist, Alice Takes A Trip, Sourpuss Clothing, Hell Bunny and many more!
Lifestyle-driven and culture-led: they are The New Alternative
Renowned for bucking the trends, LondonEdge is a show that gives brands and designers a platform to showcase their collections to the people that matter.
At this September’s landmark 30th show LondonEdge are holding their first ever “Bloggers meet-up” where guests will be personally introduced to their favourite brands and receive an amazing goody bag from an array of exhibitors!
Don’t forget to register if you want to go to this year’s most exciting trade show!
Things&Ink will also be there on the Sunday, come and say hi to some of our team!
Our guest blogger is Giselle the creator of Mindful Wanderlust a travel blog about tattoos and following a vegan lifestyle. This is the first of many posts to appear on th-ink, telling of her and her husband Cody’s travelling tales.
My name is Giselle, and I am a tattoo and travel addict. And an extreme animal lover.
I started travelling at the tender age of five, caravanning with my father and other family members to places like the Maritimes, Orlando Florida, Boston Massachusetts, and several different camp grounds throughout Canada.
When I was twelve my mom took me to Cuba; and by the time I was twenty, I had been to England, Venezuela, Peru, Egypt, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Kenya, Mauritius, and Madagascar.
For me, the road is life.
I was fifteen when I received my first tattoo. It is now resting under a better thought out piece of work. When I first started getting tattooed, every piece had to mean something to me. Like so much in my life, that has changed. I view tattooing as an art form. It helps many people through difficult times, and that is a wonderful thing, but it can also be fun and spontaneous, which can then turn into a piece of meaning.
Prior to our nomadic lifestyle, I was quite happy tending bar at home, and doing make-up on the side, but the road was calling. I have always been pretty unconventional in thought, and so the next step was to live unconventionally.
Two and a half years ago, my husband Cody and I set off on an incredible round the world adventure. We saved our pennies, sold a lot of our belongings, put the rest in storage, started up a little website, and off we went.
Egypt, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Bhutan, Indonesia, England.
We loved Thailand so much that we ended up staying for eighteen months. Cody and I spent seven out of the eighteen months at Elephant Nature Park, an elephant sanctuary in the jungles of Northern Thailand. not only did we work with elephants, but several dogs as well. It was magic.
We can’t get enough of the lifestyle.
We are now in Saskatchewan, Canada visiting friends and family, and getting tattooed. This September we are heading to Cuba for the 9th time; and in January we are travelling to Japan for two weeks, and then back to Thailand for thirty days.
We have been tattooed in Nepal, Thailand, and of course Canada, and I look forward to getting something done by Ichibay when we are in Japan.
Our plans always involve travel, tattoos, and animals; and to us, that is our kind of freedom and happiness.
There’s no telling when or if we’ll ever get tired of gallivanting around the world, but either way, we’ll be covered in memories.
Follow their journey on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and of course their Blog!
The Sheppard collection of vegan art both curated and collected by Robert Sheppard hopes to highlight and question our treatment of animals in society, as well as celebrate the beauty of animals and nature.
We’ve picked a few of our favourites to share with you. To see even more animal art visit the full collection.
Buddha Dog- Karen Fiorito
Paula 5- Roland Straller
Kitten Nugget- Dana Ellyn
Philip Harris, a 27-year-old freelance illustrator from Devon UK, illustrated a surf board at the recent Boardmasters Festival in Cornwall. Phil normally uses finer liners, dip pens and inks to create intricate illustrations primarily inspired by the Victorian and Edwardian era. His work also usually incorporates animals and patterning elements, which he combines to create engaging pictorial narratives.
I was invited to join a clothing company that I frequently work with called RSI apparel down on their stall at Boardmasters festival. Rob the owner of RSI suggested it could be cool for me to do some live drawing on the stall while he was running the shop, so I thought going with the Boardmaster theme why not draw onto a surfboard.
I think in total it took me about 20 hours working with permanent markers to finish the drawing. It was mostly done for fun and to engage with the visitors who came by the shop at the festival. It was so awesome to chat to people who popped into the shop to watch the drawing and see what there thoughts were on the design. I would love to do more events like that.
