lamaze rusty the robot tattoo!

I went to the tattooist and got another tattoo!

I am a huge fan of tattoos and have about 25, my arms are covered and I have some on my legs and back.

My wife suggested to me to get a new tattoo for my birthday as I have not had one for years. I was very nervous as its been so long but thought I will go for it!

My son has a favorite toy called "Mr Robot" its the Rusty the Robot toy from Lamaze. I thought it would be really cool to have it at the top of my arm on the inside.

I then emailed a local tattooist called Mark Hardy from Victory Tattoos and told him what I was after and he was keen to have a consultation to have a look at Mr Robot. I arranged to see him last Monday the 22nd as I was passing his shop.

I got to the tattoo shop around dinner time and was greeted by Mark who was a really nice guy and seemed really genuine and interested in doing my tattoo. I saw some of his work on his website and he is amazing! I really could not wait for my 10AM appointment on the Friday 26th.

I was so nervous all week, worrying about the "what ifs" I was worried about the pain because I had not had one for years!

I arrived at Marks tattoo shop about 15 mins early on Friday and met Marks wife Beth who seemed really nice and they both made me feel really at ease. I was also offered a nice cup of coffee (Thanks Sam!) Mark then made sure the picture he had taken earlier in the week was the right size, it was so Mark got straight to work tracing the stencil.

Mark started tattooing me at about 10:45AM and was in a nice private booth which was nice. I soon remembered what the pain felt like but it wasn't too bad. They had Mumford and Sons playing in the shop which made me feel nice and relaxed.

The tattoo took about 3 and a half hours to complete and I really had enough by then! It was so sore but I am amazed at the finished art work! As you will see from the pictures on here how amazing Mark was, the detail was fantastic and I thought "its one of the best tattoos i have ever seen". Compared to my others, well there is no comparison!

I am thrilled with my new tattoo and have not stopped looking at it! I will be going to see Mark and the team at Victory Tattoos again very soon!

Mark if you are reading this, you are an amazing artist and I really thank you for doing a fantastic job on my tattoo!

Love this mix!

On yer bike!

Yes as the name suggests, I have got a new bike!

I have been after a bike for ages now, I have always liked riding when I was younger and I really needed to get fit as I am piling on the pounds and really need to get a grip on it.

My father in law had a spare bike that he wasn't using so he has lent me it so I can get into cycling again.

I have had the bike for about a week now and went a bit mad on ebay buying loads of things that I thought I might need, for example I got a helmet and some lights, lock, bag etc...

I know you are all gagging to see the beast, so here it is!:

As you can see its a girls bike, but that does not bother me, I just enjoy poooteling about (if that's a word lol) I can be seen riding around my local town at weekends and some evenings.

I am waiting for the lights to arrive, should not be long now as the nights are drawing in now!
Well I just wanted to share my new bike with you guys!
P.S Don't worry Wayne I keep it in the kitchen, it was just having its picture taken outside lol :)

Another great portrait!

I have been back on that fiverr gig again!

I will turn your photography into Exclusive Painting Art for $5 

 

I am so impressed with this guy! I found him by chance and he is awesome at making "normal" pictures look like they have been hand painted!

He is always super reliable and trustworthy, at the moment the gig takes 3 days and he has usually got at least 10 orders in the queue. If you look at my last post you can see the amazing job that Erry's has done!

Here is the before picture:

And here is the amazing after picture!

I love the way it looks like a painting! I will be ordering so much of this guy its unbelievable! I have one more picture that he is working on and I will add that when he has finished!

Erry's also designs twitter backgrounds and I went on his website and saw one that looked great and it was only $3!  for the Photoshop PSD so you can customise the text, As I did not have Photoshop he filled all the information in and redesigned it for me for a super bargain price.

Overall I am so happy with the quality of the work and urge you all to go and buy a background or picture, you can visit his website here

I have just got my new painting from Erry's here is the before picture:

Here is the after painting:

Amazing Photo!

I have always been a big fan of photography...

I was on the website fiverr a couple of days ago and came across a "gig"

I will turn your photography into Exclusive Painting Art for $5 

I thought I would give the gig a go and found a really cute photo of my son Finley.

I then waited for a few days and here is the result.

I think it looks awesome! I am going to find another picture and share with you guys!

Thanks for looking at my blog

Matt

Why I dislike the HTC One S

I owned the HTC One S for about 6 months and here is my story. As you may know I have owned many iphones and I am a HUGE fan! I then wanted something different and thought I would go for an android phone and got talked into buying the HTC One S. What a terrible mistake I had made!

When the phone first came I dropped it straight away, the phone is SO thin and slippy! I know this sounds strange but it really is very hard to handle and paper thin. I suppose a lot of you out there would prefer a thin phone but there is thin and then there is ridiculously thin! Every time I held the phone I was scared to death about dropping it on the hard pavement. I also feel like its a really bad copy of an iphone, it tries to be like one with its apps and so forth.

 I hated the horrid bar at the top that told you about new tweets and facebook messages and emails etc.. It was always full up and had to click the clear button to clear the clutter out. This is the same on all android phones so its not HTC at fault, but it really used to get on my nerves, a lot!

 One other HUGE problem for me was how often it broke! I remember when I got my new phone it lasted about 1 week before the wifi completely stopped working! I got onto O2 who were helpful in getting a courier out to replace it. The courier had my new HTC One S with him and gave it to me. This new phone lasted about 2 months before it completely died on me! It just would not turn on or anything, i was fuming as I have loads of important meeting in my calender and O2 said they would have to take it off me again and try to repair this time, so I was without a phone for 5 days. O2 then said it was completely stuffed and gave me a brand new one, I asked for a different phone but was told that I had to have the same one as they offer like for like to my bitter disappointment!

Every time I held or used the phone I used to get peed off, it was really glitchy and was always either running slow or crashing, i really hated this phone! To top it off when I used to get calls it would drop out quite a bit and I would have to ring them back. My dad could not ever ring me on the phone as it would never let his number through for whatever reason. Over all I cannot stand either HTC phones or Android operating systems! I really fancied a change when I decided to go for the HTC One S and I really wish I had stuck with the good old iphone! I am still in contract for another 6 months at least and could not stand another minute with this awful phone so I bought a very cheap Nokia C2 05 for £30 and I love this phone! It is not trying to be something its not and it works great! I will do a review on this phone very soon!

Would I recommend buying a android or HTC? Not if your life depended on it! Thanks for reading and I hope it has helped you in your decision.

Getting a new phone, at last!

Hi Everyone,

I have always been an iphone man up until about 6 months ago...

I absolutely love iphones! I had the 3g the 3gs and the 4 and 4s.. They are in my opinion the very best mobile phones on the market and have been for quite a while.

About 6 months ago I was due an upgrade from my 4s and got talked into getting a HTC One S by a salesman from the phone company saying they were amazing phones. What a bad decision that was.

From day one of getting the HTC I realized what a bad mistake I had made and was angry with myself for listening to that guy telling me how good they were. But I really could not afford the high price per month that phone company's charge for iphones! So I had no real choice but to stick with the terrible HTC.

I have put up with the phone long enough and found a solution, the Nokia C2 05 It is a basic phone and has email, twitter and facebook, all I need really.

When the phone arrives I will make a post to let you guys know what I think, I am finally rid of this rubbish HTC!

My 1992 Ford Escort

 Quite an unusual post? Yes you are probably right! 

I got this car given to me from my brother about 8 months ago, here is the story.

In March 2011 we bought a 2002 Skoda Fabia 5 door in silver. We paid £1,000 for this car and was a very sound reliable car, apart from a few problems we had, one problem we had was the terrible leak that we got coming in from the back doors. I goggled the problem and apparently it was a very common Skoda fault, so I read up on how to fix it and soon had it sorted out by taking the rear door cards of the frame and using a thick black sealant around the seal then put the door card back on.

Then the front window motors started going, first the driver's window stopped working, then the passenger window started to fail. This was highly annoying as it was summer time when this happened so the car was like driving an oven!

Then I started to have problems with the car loosing water, this was a real pain in the rear as I had to continuously top the car up with water all the time. I did get this repaired as the radiator needed replacing at the cost of £210, Yikes! 

Anyway I started to get really annoyed about the windows not working as it was a nightmare to drive because of the heat and the car did not have air conditioning, so it had to go but in the meantime my brother came to the rescue with his no longer needed 1992 Ford Escort as he had just been given a 2008 Mini one from our father.

My first impression of the car was surprisingly a very good one, I mean you could open the windows, that was a huge plus point! The car also seemed to be quite a good car really. I had done just short of 60,000 miles and everything seemed to be quite tight and sturdy, the Skoda had 105,000 miles and started to show.

My wife Kayleigh absolutely hates the car! Never has she detested anything as much as this! I totally understand why I mean it looks really shit, Its white and from the old days, my wife would have been 4 years old when this car was brand new! It has a musty smell inside as you would expect from a car this old, but it's a good runner so it has to stay, we are too poor to buy anything else yet.

I have had the car quite a few months now and I have only had a couple of problems with it, the first was the ignition kept turning itself on without the keys in it! So I took it to my trusty mechanic Dave who repaired it in no time and told me it was because water was coming inside the car by the fuse box and was causing a short in the electrics. Then a few weeks ago the lights stopped working so it was straight off to the mechanics again who said it was the switch that turns the lights on that was at fault. He said he tried to get hold of a new switch but they don't make the parts anymore as the car is 20 years old, he tried some scrap yards but had the same problem, no one had the part in. I thought this would have been the end of the road for the escort but Dave managed to take the switch apart and rebuilt it, amazing!

I am still amazed how the car is still going strong after all these years on the road but it has and even though my wife hates the car, I quite like it and hope it will last for many years to come yet.

Sorry about the post being a bit boring, but I didn't know what to write about and thought why not write about the car and put a couple of pictures on for all to see. Please become a member of my blog I would love to know if there are people out there who like what they see. Thanks again for reading and feel free to leave a comment.

My love of twitter

I absolutely love twitter right now! I cannot get enough!

Do you use twitter? or do you prefer facebook?

 I have been using twitter from the very beginning and have loved every minute I have spent online and believe me that's a lot of total hours spent on twitter. A lot of my freinds don't like twitter they all use and prefer facebook.

 I like the idea that you can meet total strangers on twitter and nobody minds and that's kind of what its about. Where facebook you have to know someone personally or people don't accept your request, I like the way celebs all use twitter and you really can follow your favorite celebs online.

 I have had quite a few famous people tweet me back for instance Jamie East said thanks for talking about Big Brother and Leighton Denny has Favorited my tweets many times. Thanks for reading

7 days and still smoke free!

It's been a whole week now since I quit smoking and I feel fantastic! It's one of the best decisions I have ever made.

It seems only 2 minutes ago when I decided to quit. I wanted to let you know that it really is not that hard to stop smoking, you can see my story in the previous post.

When I stopped last Tuesday I never really thought past a day at a time and I am really pleased to have made it to a week unharmed. I remember people saying that the first week is the hardest and if you can get past that the you have cracked it, so as you can imagine I feel good about the future.

I have been having some vivid dreams over the last few days and nearly all of them I had a cigarette in my mouth! I don't crave them anymore I just seem to dream about it.

The first couple of days I felt like I needed a smoke but as the week progressed I started to feel normal again, I found that I could quite happily go without smoking forever!

Thanks for reading!

Matt :)