The London Tattoo Convention 2010

So as I mentioned last week, at the weekend I went to the London Tattoo Convention and as I expected, it was brilliant! I saw some amazing sights and also managed to get my first tattoo from one of the best people in the business!! Sadly it wasn't Tim Hendricks as I had hoped for initially, but instead I got it done by Valerie Vargas, who is also an amazing artist. In fact she designed the convention poster you see at the top of this post.

I stayed in London the night before at my friend Sarah's house so that we could make an early start on Friday morning. Totally aside from the convention theme, we ended up at this random little pop-up bar in Putney, which offered THE BEST view of the London skyline I have ever seen...

You could see everything, from the London Eye in the west across the Canary Wharf in the east; it was stunning.

So anyway, I got up at 5:30am on Friday morning, and we made our way down to the Tobacco Dock in Wapping, where the convention was being held. We arrived at 7:15am, and were pleasantly surprised to see that we were 7th and 8th in the queue

That's Sarah you can see putting her hair up at the back :o)

The doors weren't opening until 11:30 am, so we had quite a wait ahead of us. We sat down and the nice man in the orange jumper (who I later discovered is called Christopher) started talking to us. He proceeded to inform me that although I was 7th in the queue for the convention, I was still 5th in the queue for Tim Hendricks!! That's right my friends...4 of the 6 people ahead of me were queuing for the same artist I was, despite the fact that there would be more than 200 artists working the convention!! But as I said before, Tim is one of the best artists in the world, and thanks to his appearance on Miami Ink, everybody knows it. 

At this point I started panicking somewhat about my chances of actually getting tattooed by Tim. I figured he would only realistically get a chance to tattoo 4 people each day maximum, and so I decided that I would go for my 2nd choice, Valerie (and I was only 2nd in her queue!!) and then I would go back even earlier on Saturday and queue up for Tim. So when the doors opened at 11:30am I headed for Valerie's stall and secured my appointment for later that afternoon. I only discovered the flaw in my plan a little later in the day when I found out that right off the bat, Tim had booked himself up for THE WHOLE CONVENTION!! That's all 3 days booked within the first 10 minutes. While I understand that this was the easiest way to do it from a planning point of view, I do feel that it was not the fairest way to do it. My sister Becs is a teacher and therefore only had tickets for Saturday and Sunday as she can't take time off on weekdays. This instantly meant that she stood no chance whatsoever of getting tattoed by Tim, and I'm sure there were A LOT of very disappointed people who queued from the crack of dawn on Saturday and Sunday, only to find that they were too late. But that aside, it was still an honour to see him and I had a really nice chat with his lovely wife who was also getting tattooed by Valerie Vargas whilst they were in London. 

If you ever get a chance to go to a big tattoo convention, I thoroughly encourage you to do so, even if tattoos aren't your thing. There are some fascinating sights to be seen...

Traditional tattooing...on the head!!

Oliver Peck (Kat Von D's ex husband)

Genko

This was the most amazing tattoo I have ever seen. The detail was STUNNING. I just wish I could remember who did it!!

Valerie Vargas ( who did my tattoo)

And finally, here is my tattoo, my FIRST tattoo, which Valerie made for me and I love it :o)

xxx