Yo Duders…  Iva La Alien Transmitting via the gift of internet….

Thanks to all of you that turned out to support my band MACHINEGUN HIPPIES….

With your help we made it through to the final of the Tunbridge Wells Forum Stables Battle Of The Bands….

The next and final round is on 11^th of September @ The Forum .. we really want to win this so please find it in your hearts to come and support us again….

You can find us on facebook and www.myspace.com/machinegunhippies

See you there xxxxx

It’s that time of year again – the time when you count down the days, the hours, the minutes, when you can put the machines down and bugger off on holiday for a while.

This year the Sinner family headed off to the beautiful island of Crete. We’ve been to a fair few of the Greek islands, but never tried Crete and everyone told us how lovely it is.

So we’re up at 3.30am to get in a cab to the airport at 4.30am! Blimey, talk about early…! waste of time going to bed really… anyway, the little sinners take it all in their stride and are stuffing cake and biscuits in their faces at 5.30am at the cafe in the airport, while we’re downing extra strong cappucino’s just to stay vaguely awake!

The flight was on time and easy, then as usual when you get off the plane onto the tarmac in Greece, the heat just hits you, making you instantly relax and realise the holiday has actually begun – brilliant!

After a (longer than in the brochure) coach transfer to the hotel we rock up to the reception only to be told that our room wasn’t ready – ‘here we go’ I think, typical of our luck…

… but then… the (very nice) man at reception said ‘we apologise for the delay in getting your room ready, so we’re sending you off to the restaurant (one of four!) for a free lunch’ RESULT!

Then a nice man arrived in a Fiat and took us to the restaurant (all of a 30 second drive) and we ordered what we wanted! Nice

After lunch the nice man in the Fiat returned and took us back to the hotel reception, but the (very nice) man said ‘we are very, very sorry, but your room is still not ready’

‘Fuckin’ great’ I start to think, then before I can get into full Victor Meldrew mode the (very nice) man said ‘so to apologise we want to upgrade you to a suite, will that be alright sir?’.

I blink, look at Mrs Sinner and (sarcastically) say ‘will that be all right with you dear?’. She confirms that that will indeed be fine with her, and I tell the (very nice) man that ‘Yes, that will be alright, thank you very much’

The (very nice) reception man then explained that they had to get our’suite’ ready, so while that was being prepared he gave us the cardkey to another room which we could use while waiting. Once again the nice Fiat man drove us to the room, promising to return shortly. We nipped off to the beach and gratefully paddled in the beautiful clear, warm sea for a bit, then ruined the nice clean room getting all the sand off ourselves!

The nice Fiat man then returned (you’d think he’d get bored by now eh?) and drove us back to reception to get our luggage.

Well, by now you can imagine I’m expecting (not Jeremy Beadle ‘cos I know he carked it years ago), but some hidden camera show host to leap out and laugh that we’d been framed or something. But no, the nice man in the Fiat came and put our luggage in the back and whisked us off to our ‘suite’, a beautiful, large, first floor, air-conditioned, double flat screen tv’d, huge balconied pad for the week. Absolutely blindin’ result!

Stuff like this never happens to the Sinners…

From then on our holiday just went brilliantly – the hotel was fantastic, the food superb, the beaches awesome – all in all a blissful, perfect week.

But now we’re back in grey old England and cold reality – so it’ll be back to the needle soon…

Hope you all have a good holiday too!

Here in the Sinner household, in Sinnerville, me and little Sinner seem to have got the fishing bug lately and keep getting up really early to go fishing in the local lake. There’s something really good about simply  sitting by the water as the sun makes an appearance, waiting for the fish to take the bait.

Those of you who keep up to date with this happy little Sinner blog(!) will remember how upset the little Sinner was a while back when he nearly caught his first big fish, only to get snapped up and left slightly weepy and wondering what could have been…

Well I’m pleased and proud to report that he managed to land his first, very decent common carp the other day. Typically this was his first cast of the morning, before I’d even managed to assemble my own rod!… one itty bitty bit of sweet corn and ‘bingo’ he was into his first carp fight, and he did a sterling job, playing it well and getting it to the landing net all by himself. It was an exiting moment in our fishing world and one we’ll both remember for a long time – well done you little Sinner!

Mouse boy Chris has finally got his back (almost) finished – at least it looks like a proper tattoo now! Ben and Iva pinned him to the chair and tore into him for a couple of hours. Poor boy didn’t like it at all, but hey – do we care? of course not!

Nice one Chris now lets do some more and get you ‘tattooed up’!

the one that didn't get away!

Been taking the little Sinner fishing for a while now and he absolutely loves it. Every weekend it’s ‘Can we go fishing Dad? can we, can we…?’

So the other day we went to our local lake which is really kid friendly. Basically you can drop your hook in anywhere and catch something! This particular day was lovely – really warm and sunny without burning the shit out of you, and the fish were really biting well. Little Sinner keeps on trying to catch bigger fish so we tried the method his grandad uses with much success – floating crust. And bugger me it was wicked! The big old carp all stay near the surface when it’s warm and like a bit of bread and you can just watch their big gobs pull the bread and your hook down into the water and ‘BANG’, you’re into a nice fighting fish!

My personal best by far was this nice mirror carp – what’s nice for me is I spend ages drawing and tattooing all kinds of carp so catching a big one it’s great to see all the detail and stuff that makes them such a great tattoo. Unfortunately, little Sinner didn’t catch his big fish…. he was so close to one but got his line properly snapped with a loud crack, so that was that. He’ll get there soon I’m sure.

Until next time…. happy fishing!

Oh yeah! Seven Sins Tattoo has just celebrated it’s 10 year anniversay!

It seems like only yesterday that we opened the doors to the world. Back then everyone told me it’d take about five years to get properly established, and I guess they were right. After five years we really started to get into a higher gear and the work just kept coming. Nowadays after ten years in business, it’s flat out, non-stop tattooing for all four of us, which is fantastic! Our diary is always full and the customers are always happy!

We have a brilliant customer base who trust us and our work completely – there’s no better compliment than people letting you do pretty much what you want on them!

So to all our customers, past, present and future, I’d like to say a massive THANK YOU for all your support!

And here’s to the next ten years eh…!

Happy Birthday to all you Sinners!

I hate the poxy tabloids – rubbish red-tops – lazy bloody journos the lot of ‘em. Full of made up bollocks and sensationalism. But I hate poxy ad men more. Those jumped up little cretins in their designer red rimmed glasses and snazzy braces (see we can stereotype too wankers!) sitting in their shabby little offices, scrapping the barrell to come up with yet another  hackneyed excuse for an ad campaign.

Step forward the tossers who came up with this garbage for Suzuki – you know who you are… and what’s more so do I! This ad campaign is running currently in the Scum and other red top tabloids.

You can just imagine it can’t you…

…it’s friday afternoon – they’re up against a deadline (who cares, life goes on etc) and they’ve just got back from the poncy wine bar …

‘Oh Nigel we need to get this campaign wrapped up before we nip off to pick up the charlie from wossisname’,

‘Ooh I know Colin, lets brainstorm this one and get some lines racked up’.

Seconds pass by… tick, tick, tick…

‘Oooh I’ve got it Nig!’,

‘Go for it Colin!’….

‘You know how tattooists can’t spell right?’,

‘Really Colin, is that true?’,

‘Oh who cares, everyone know they’re all thick, that’s why they just draw on people for a living, so no-one will care, it’ll be a laugh!’,

‘Ok Colin, hit me with it…’,

‘Well Nig, we’ll have a model bloke who looks like a tattooist a bit, but hasn’t got any tattoos right, but we can draw some on, no-one will notice…, and he’ll be doing a tattoo right, on this big blokes back, and… here’s the sell right… he’s spelt the tattoo wrong! It’ll be wicked, we’ll get the campaign finished, and we can get down and sort the charlie right!’.

‘Ooh Nig you’re a bloody creative genius you are!’

‘Sorted!’

Well that’s what I imagine happened in the Suzuki ad men’s shabby office anyway – because if they had any brain they’d find that we tattoo artists aren’t thick – I have an National Diploma in Art & Design thanks – we can actually write and spell too. Some of us get together regularly to make the tattoo world a safer and better place for the rest of you, lobbying parliament, holding educational seminars for environmental health officers and taking on the big boys…

Besides which tattooists in the modern world use computers for lettering design and have ‘spell checkers’!

So to you sorry ad twats at Suzuki – absolutely NO ‘RESPLECT’ you cocks. Next time you want to stereotype an art that takes a lot of hard work and pure skill to do well, pick on something else…  maybe advertising eh? Doh! that’s not an art, unless it’s the art of bullshit of course!

Oh shit, better make a… wait for it…. ‘Swift Exit!’

Lame doesn’t even come close…

‘Evening lads of the village’

A wierd expression I know, but one me and my old mate Mark were greeted with by the landlord of the Greyhound one night years ago… sorry I digress…

Village life is a beautiful thing. Old fashioned, quant, bordering on the senile and demented! But so much better than living in some nondescript city where no-one talks to each other and everyone treats their neighbour with manic suspicion.

Anyway, the last May Bank Holiday in the Sinner Village, we had our annual May Fayre. The ladies of the WI go baking mad, filling their stall with awesome cakes, buns and biscuits. There’s plants for sale, ropey ceramics, grubby car boot tat, bouncy castles and more. The very modern lady vicar turns out to pour tea in the refreshment tent, there’s tombolas, fishing for ducks, maypole dancing, a May Queen, the absolute lot! And along with this they have competitions for everything from flower arranging to poetry to wine making. One of the categories is for painting – so I thought ‘Why Not?’ I grabbed a few off the studio walls, paid a quid an entry and left the lady taking the entries saying ‘ooh aren’t they all different!’

Well I like to be diverse you see and paint all kinds of stuff – I entered an artists pallette with a bulldog on it, a budha, a heart with wings, a flaming skull in blue and a Bob Ross inspired mountain landscape. (You’ve gotta love a bit of Bob Ross!)

So me, Mrs Sinner and our little Sinnerettes toddle off to the May Fayre and have a jolly old time. Eating cake, hooking ducks, trying to win a coconut (poor little Sinner boy is a lousy shot) and trying to shelter when the rain pours down as it usually does on a Bank Holiday! Then Mrs Sinner checks out the competition gallery and guess what… I’d only got 2nd for the blue flaming skull and 3rd for the mountain landscape! I was pretty chuffed and not too bothered that I’d been beaten by a pretty average windmill scene!

Picking up the rosettes (yes rosettes, I told you this was village life!) from the visiting vicar, he asked me which painting had got the 2nd place and didn’t bat an eyelid when I told him it was a blue flaming skull!

So there you go – tattooists are artists too

Rock ‘n’ Roll!

2nd Place for the Flaming blue skull

3rd Place for the mountain landscape

Had a few requests for a follow up from us to the blog below about the twats in the latest series of LA Ink, masquarading as tattooists etc.

Well, I’m pleased to tell you they’ve all been Fired! Sacked, Given The Elbow – about time too.

This is good news.

The bad news is the crumby network have obviously got contracts to honour and now we keep being subjected to ‘insights’ into their increasingly banale and tedious lives.

Look you tossers, the studio (American Electric) they now all work in is shit, they talk shit, the tattoos are shit,  so stop wasting our fucking viewing time okay! Just give us the luscious Kat Von D and her crew and leave out the shit.

POST FROM MARCH…

The Missing L(A)ink(s)

Is it just me or has the latest series of the (alleged) popular tattoo ‘reality’ TV show LA Ink become a total pile of steaming poo? Every episode now seems to focus solely on some air-head bimbo twat called Oooorbreeee, who hasn’t got a fuckin’ clue how to work in a tattoo shop. The rest of the crew, especially Cory Miller,  hate her guts and let her know it (like you would) and it’s all ‘drama’, ‘drama’, ‘drama’ – well if you call constantly bursting into tears all the time because you’re useless – ‘drama’ – It’s unbelievable!

And to make it worse they’ve got a tattooer who’s an untattooed ‘nu yawker’, called Pooorleee, who’s about as good at tattooing as I am at brain surgery! What a fuckin’ loser – Wanker.

And if that ain’t enough, there’s some freaky looking ‘make up’ artist, turned tattooer, Aaimmmeeee. Man you’ve got to see her – the make up is amazing – like your two year old daughter got let loose with nan’s make up bag, but not as good…

Each week it just gets worse – hardly any decent artwork any more – just scripted ‘drama’

FUCK OFF! We deserve better…

St George & Dragon - Gouache - A4 - framed - £60 (plus p+p)

St. Georges Day

Last saturday 24th March, was St. Georges Day in England. Here in sunny Sinnerville it was celebrated in the town with a festival. The high street was closed off and lined with stalls from local businesses, clubs and charities. Over 4000 people turned up on a gorgeous sunny day and had a great time! Blimey, even the Queen turned up! Us Sinners had a stand showing off our artwork and tattoos, all related to England and St. George.

We Brits are a patriotic bunch and here at the studio we do loads of tattoos of St. George and the dragon, bulldogs, Britannia and so on. And we’re proud to do them too. They can be really challenging and time consuming and always pretty spectacular.

We’re looking forward to the World Cup in a few weeks and doing loads more England badges and stuff. Come on boys!!

Check out some art – all for sale.

Bulldog artists pallette - acrylic - £40 (plus p+p)

Bulldog with flag artists pallette - acrylic - £40 (plus p+p)

Skull artists pallette - acrylic - £40 (plus p+p)

If you’re interested in buying anything drop us an email at info@sevensinstattoo.com