Things&Ink

July 8, 2015August 4, 2015

Channel 4 Tattoo Fixers

The new series of Tattoo Fixers on Channel 4 is set in a pop-up tattoo parlour where three tattoo artists transform unwanted and regrettable tattoos. The team work on a mixture of clients who wish to change their embarrassing, badly done, rude and crude tattoos. People come to the studio and show the team the piece that they want covering, while giving a short brief and each artist draws a tattoo design and the customer picks the one they want to get tattooed.

The team includes:

Jay Hutton who manages his own studio in Cheshire, where he tattoos realism and black and grey work on celebrity clientèle.

The wonderful self-taught Lou Hopper of King of Hearts London, who was one of the artists tattooing at our recent Feminist Flash day.

Sketch who specialises in traditional bold colour tattoos from Reppin Ink London..

Watch the trailer for the programme below.

Missed an episode? Watch the series here.

Please note that this is a blog post about the programme, we are not actually running the shop. Please get in touch with the artists personally if you have any questions.

Image from Tom Barnes

July 7, 2015July 7, 2015

Tattoos from the first ever Southampton Tattoo Festival

The first ever Southampton Tattoo Festival was held over the weekend 4th-5th July at Ageas Bowl, Hedge End Southampton. Yellow Vintage Fair have teamed up with Ian Ink Tattoo shop to bring a family-friendly tattoo convention like no other.

Here are a few of the tattoos created at this year’s convention:

Test Drive Your Tattoo

Momentary Ink, a start-up company in Philadelphia, allows customers to test drive their tattoo ideas with temporary designs before they go for the real thing.

For $15 you send the company an image of the tattoo design you want and they send you a temporary tattoo back, for you to apply on yourself at home.

The designs are of a high-quality with colour and can last up to five days, depending on your own routine. The temporary tattoos are sealed, matted, water and sweat resistant. They even offer a money-back guarantee is you are not happy with their product.

But if you are so unsure of what you want to get tattooed on you for the rest of your life, should you even be considering getting a tattoo in the first place? Will the process of uploading images from search engines, such as Google, lead to more people copying other artists’ work, rather than opting for custom work?

What do you think? Will you be ordering a temporary tattoo to test drive your own ideas?

July 6, 2015July 6, 2015

My Anxious Heart Photographic Series

Katie Joy Crawford has created a series of photographs titled My Anxious Heart to capture and expose her struggles with anxiety and depression.

Katie explains on her blog that:

My Anxious Heart explores and identifies how emotionally and physically depleting general anxiety disorder can be from a personal perspective. As I have carried anxiety for the majority of my life, I’ve chosen to photographically depict this battle and its constant presence. Since it is within my own mind where anxiety is born, I have decided to interpret my roles as both instigator and victim through self portraiture.

Each portrait depicts a part of depression that Katie struggled with, each accompanied by a caption to explain the altering affects of her mental state.

“My head is filling with helium. Focus is fading. Such a small decision to make. Such an easy question to answer. My mind isn’t letting me. It’s like a thousand circuits are all crossing at once.”

“A captive of my own mind. The instigator of my own thoughts. The more I think, the worse it gets. The less I think, the worse it gets. Breathe. Just breathe. Drift. It’ll ease soon.”

“A glass of water isn’t heavy. It’s almost mindless when you have to pick one up. But what if you couldn’t empty it or set it down? What if you had to support its weight for days … months … years? The weight doesn’t change, but the burden does. At a certain point, you can’t remember how light it used to seem. Sometimes it takes everything in you to pretend it isn’t there. And sometimes, you just have to let it fall.”

Follow Katie on Facebook for my photographs and updates on future projects.

July 6, 2015

Frank Iero interview on film

Th-ink Music presents this short film of our Frank Iero interview (published in full in the Fruity Issue of Things&Ink)… Our music writer Jen Adamson chats to Frank about everything from fatherhood to being a frontman, all while Frank adds to his collection of ‘tour tats.’

Frank Iero for Things&Ink magazine from Alice Snape on Vimeo.

Read the full interview in issue 11,which is available to buy from thingsandink.com/buy.
With special thanks to Paul Saunders at Meteor Social Labs, who brought this film to life.
Tattoo by James Hate at One By One Store in London.
The track being played in the film is ‘She’s The Prettiest Girl at the Party, and She Can Prove It with a Solid Right Hook’ from the album Stomachaches, by frnkiero and the cellabration. Photos by Derek Bremner.