Most people spend a considerable amount of time deciding what design or phrase they want permanently inked on their bodies, but one tattoo artist asks his clients to leave that decision to him. Several hundreds of people have already allowed him to ink the phrase of his choice on them without even knowing what it reads beforehand.

Monty Richthofen, a.k.a. Maison Hefner, had only been doing tattoos for a year and a half in 2017, when he started “My Words, Your Body”, an artistic project where he tattoos wiling adults with motivational quotes and mantras without revealing what they are before permanently inking them. Clients only decide what part of their body they want tattooed, but the tattoo itself is Hefner’s choice. He has a conversation with every person and based on their discussion and his experience, he picks one of around 5,000 different phrases he has scribbled in five notebooks.

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A Swedish mother of two whose tattoo artist misspelled her son’s name decided that it was easier and a lot less painful to legally change the boy’s name rather than go through several painful laser removal sessions.

30-year-old Johanna Giselhäll Sandström, from Kyrkhult, Sweden, wanted to show her devotion to her two children, Nova and Kevin, by having their names tattooed on her arm. She visited a local tattoo shop, told one of the tattooists there what she wanted and gave him her children’s name. He never asked anything about the spelling and instead just went to work on her arm. The woman didn’t notice anything strange about the tattoo at first, but when she got home and had a closer look at it, her heart sank. Instead of ‘Kevin’ the artist had misspelled it ‘Kelvin’.

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Die-hard soccer fans have been known to do some crazy things to honor their favorite teams, but I don’t remember anyone actually covering their entire upper body in a permanent tattoo of their team’s official jersey. Well, a fan of Brazilian soccer club Flamengo spent an entire year doing just that.

José Maurício dos Anjos, a 33-year-old man from Rio de Janeiro, has been making headlines in his home country for having a life-size version of his favorite soccer team’s jersey tattooed on his upper body. It reportedly took a tattoo artist 90 hours of work split in 32 sessions, throughout an entire year. The striped black and red jersey tattoo comes complete with the club’s emblem on the left side of his chest, and the number 10 tattooed on his back.

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A 26-year-old woman recently made headlines in Thailand after posting photos of her enormous tattooed eyebrows on social media. They had been permanently inked by a cheap, inexperienced tattoo artist, but the woman was lucky to have them corrected for free by a kindhearted beauty therapist.

The woman, who goes by the name Kanyarat Dew Chaichan on Facebook, reportedly decided to get her eyebrows permanently tattooed last year, after finding a tattoo artist willing to do it for very little money. Unfortunately, the age-old saying “you get what you pay for” once again proved true, as Kanyarat was left with two giant slug-like tattoos above her eyes. She had always had wide, fluffy eyebrows, but these tattoos were almost double in size.

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Looking at most of Adam Curlykale’s Instagram photos you would think he used a negative filter, but that’s actually how he really looks. After tattooing his entire face – including his eyes – graphite grey and dyeing his facial hair white, the 32-year-old tattoo enthusiast looks like a real-life negative version of himself.

Adam got his first tattoo when he was 20-years-old, a small message on his arm that read ‘I am’. But that was only the beginning of a transformational journey that the 32-year-old claims is far from over. He has so far covered 90% of his body with tattoos, and doesn’t plan on stopping until 99% of his skin has been covered in ink. As for the 1% Adam plans to leave untouched, he says they are “secret”.

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With millions of fans around the world, Dragon Ball Z is one of the most popular anime series to ever come out of Japan. From cosplaying as their favorite characters, creating amazing fan art to spending their hard earned money on memorabilia, fans love to show their appreciation for the epic saga, but few have gone as far as this hardcore Dragon Ball Z fan from Thailand who covered his whole body in colorful tattoos inspired by the Japanese franchise.

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A German model has found a way to makes sure her beloved pet cat stays with her forever. Not only did she get a huge tattoo of it on her thigh, but she had it done with a s special ink synthesised from its fur.

38-year-old Kathrin Toelle loves her two pet cats like they were her own children, and knows that she’ll miss them more than anything else when they eventually pas away. So when she heard about a new tattoo ink that would help her stay connected to her felines forever, she didn’t hesitate. Now Kathrin, who goes by the modelling name Makani Terror, sports a large tattoo of her 10-year-old cat Gizmo, made with ink from its luscious fur, and plans on getting one of her other pet soon.

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At just 30-years-old, Karol Rybakowski is already one of the biggest names in the world of tattoos, and looking at some of his works, it’s pretty easy to see why. His portrait tattoos look as if a picture has been slapped on the subject skin, and in many cases they turn out even better than the photos that inspired them.

It won’t surprise you to learn that Karol Rybakowski studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Warsaw, before becoming a tattoo artist, but while that explains his artistic style, I for one still can’t wrap my head around how a 30-year-old can create such stunningly-realistic tattoos. And apparently, I’m not the only one. About four years ago, just when his works started showing up online, people in the business who had never seen his tattoos in person actually thought that they were photoshopped. There was a particularly heated debate surrounding his tattoo of Bradley Cooper as sniper Chris Kyle in “American Sniper” with many people claiming that it looked too good to be true.

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Although stretch marks are a typical, albeit annoying, part of life, most people wish that they could make them permanently disappear. There is an entire industry built around creams, lotions, and even surgery to help conceal these imperfections, but a Brazilian tattoo artist has developed a much simpler, more effective solution.

Rodolpho Torres, of São Paulo, uses flesh colored ink to hide stretch marks as well as circles under the eye. His exact method is a closely guarded secret, but we know that it involves creating an optical illusion via tattoo shading. Anvisa (National Agency of Sanitary Surveillance) has approved his ink, and he personalizes each mixture to achieve a tone similar to that of the client’s skin. The ink blends into the stretch marks and dark circles, giving them the color of the skin. Once the tattoos have healed, the client’s skin appears smoother, and after sixty days they can sunbathe without the risk of spots developing.

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Paul Ferrell, a British ex-pat who has been living in Taiwan for the last 13 years, recently decided to show everyone how much he loved the small Asian country by getting a tattoo of its Chinese name on his forehead and its green independence flag inked on his chin.

Ferrell became the talk of the town in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where he owns a popular bar, after getting the unusual tattoos inked on his face. He claims to have made the “rash decision” after a night of heavy drinking and a passionate discussion about Taiwan’s independence. The British ex-pat recently told reporters that he was inspired by his love for Taiwan, but insists that he would not have gone through with his impulse, had he not been so drunk at the time.

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If you’re looking to get a tattoo, but don’t have a specific design in mind, or if you’re just looking to get a classic tattoo at a discount, the Get What You Want tattoo gumball machine may be just what you’ve been looking for.

Located at the Elm Street Tattoo shop, in Dallas, Texas, the Get What You Get gumball machine is filled with random tattoo designs packed in plastic balls. Interested customers must pay $100 to turn the little knob and have the machine release a random tattoo design which they can then have inked for free at the shop. While there are no bad designs in the bunch, the owner of the Elm Street Tattoo shop anticipated that some people may not be satisfied with their first design, so for an extra $20, they get another turn. You don’t have to get the design tattooed, but the shop does state that the fee for using the Get What You Get machine is not refundable.

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Inal Bersekov is an incredibly talented tattoo artist from Belgium whose black and white, photo-realistic tattoos look printed on the skin of his clients.

There are plenty of celebrated tattoo artists in the world today, each with their own unique styles, but when it comes to inking detailed portraits, you probably won’t find anyone better than Inal Bersekov. The quality of his works is so insane that it’s nearly impossible to tell that you’re looking at someone’s tattoo, and not a black and white photo, or a really good hyper-realistic drawing.

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Catt Gallinger, a young woman from Canada, is using her own experience to make people to think twice and do their research before getting an eyeball tattoo. In her case, the botched procedure left her with blurry vision in her left eye and purple discharge coming out of it.

Gallinger, from Ottawa, Canada, said that she decided to get an eyeball tattoo so that she would “feel more at home in my body”, but never imagined it would end up costing her her sight. Soon after coloring the white of her left eyeball purple, the 24-year-old pet nutritionist noticed purple discharge oozing out of it. She went to the hospital, where doctors administered antibiotic drops and sent her home. Unfortunately, things got even worse after that. Her eye became swollen shut, and after doctors used steroids to alleviate her symptoms, the tattoo became congealed around her cornea, affecting her vision and causing severe discomfort.

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At an age when most kids keep their hands busy with video game controllers, smartphones or tablets, 12-year-old Ezrah Dormon, from Panama City, is already a popular tattoo artist. Despite his young age, people are lining up to have him ink a permanent tattoo into their skin.

Tattoo parlors are usually off-limits to kids, but walk into the Honolulu tattoo shop in Panama City, and you may see a cute long-haired kid painstakingly working on a client’s tattoo or honing his inking skills on a grapefruit. His name is Ezrah, and he is already one of the most in-demand artists in Panama. I don’t know what it is about getting tattooed by an inexperienced child, but people are reportedly lining up to have him work his magic on them. They’ve all been pleased with his work, too.

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26-year-old Helena Fernandes likes to draw, but she is not particularly good at it. But did that small detail stop her from opening her own tattoo shop and permanently inking people with her mediocre designs? Of course not! If anything, her poor drawing skills actually contributed to her success.

Helen did her first tattoo about a year ago, when she inked her boyfriend for fun. Apparently, their friends found her work appealing, because it was natural and different, and some of them asked her to work her magic on them as well. She bought her own tattooing kit on the internet, and due to the high cost of materials, she started charging for tattoos, investing all the proceeds into better quality supplies. She started working as a professional tattoo artist in March, inking people at a studio she set up at her home.

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