New Nephew

Here's the first piccies of my gorgeous nephew who arrived a month early on the 27th Jan 08, just two days before my b'day! He weighed in at 5lb 7.5oz and made his appearance just before 2am.

His proud Mom & Dad are Jo and my brother Darren - well done guys ;-)

We are all waiting to go up and see him now that he's home from hospital, he's tiny but doing real well.

Desperate for Ink!

Hi peeps,

This tattoo lark is well addictive, my paw prints done at Xmas are pretty much healed now, next week will be 6 weeks I think and apart from adding a touch of cream every now and then to stop it feeling dry it's fine. So am now gagging to get the third tatt done, one to represent my relationship with my daughter and having had a sneaky peak at what my tattoo guy has sketched out for me (based on my good mate Amber's drawings) it looks awesome and I can't wait ;-) Going to hopefully book it in tomorrow for Easter and then get the ankle ones done before our summer holiday so they are ready to show off if we are lucky enough to get weather for wearing shorts this year. Also toying with a possible back piece as I bought my first tattoo magazine at the weekend and was amazed at some of the tatts in there. I loved my dog Max, a sheltie, and have a wonderful photo of him so will ask Ben if it would be possible to use it for a tattoo. Not going to do anything about that one till next year maybe, it'll need thinking about as I have also looked at Native American images for inspiration as I am unsure as to what I would like.

Sketches

Have posted a new album on my Picasa Web album area containing some conversions from photos into sketches. They have been produced using a filter called Impressionist that used to ship with Frontpage 97, 98 and 2000 (the full copies only). It is so wicked, I came across it by accident whilst searching on the web and then found a really useful site called http://www.retouchpro.com/ which have some good tutorials and forum advice on how to use it. I've only just started to scratch the surface of it, there are loads of options to tweak but I like what I have seen so far. It'll keep me occupied during the winter evenings ;-)

Also on the retouchpro site is a video tutorial by "Swampy" which shows you how to deal with the bland skies that we so often see in this country and which frequently spoil an otherwise good photo. Thanks Swampy!

Tattoo and Ear Piercing Update

Once again yours truely has successfully healed another tattoo. The paw prints have settled down a treat and the flakiness etc. has gone leaving a wonderful enticing picture. Looking forward to seeing what Ben has sketched out for the next one, will most likely call into town sometime this week to get this one checked over and see the sketch at the same time.

My jewellery finally arrived last Saturday from piercing.org, these are the threadless labrets for my ear rim piercing. I had borrowed one from my nostril piercing to help eliminate the trauma caused by my winter hat but obviously the gauge of the nostril labrets is too small really. Glad I purchased the taper pin to help fit it and it took some encouragement so perhaps the hole had started to shrink already. Anyhow finally got it in and so far so good, the back of the labret is larger than for the nostril labrets but not too bad, popped in the gem end this morning so have a matching pair for this evening's do at the Country & Western Linedancing club. Here's hoping the labret works out OK over the winter months, I really like the rings but they get squashed by my winter hat and end up making my ear really sore and I don't want to have to retire it as I really like it and I've got this far with it. It'll have been done 2years this coming April but it's one of the most traumatic piercings I have had to heal. By comparison my nostril piercing was a walk in the park! Still no pain no gain as they say. Though the tattoos are by far easier to deal with both for healing and afterwards, there's nothing to get caught up on clothing etc. Think I will stick to them from now on!

Xmas Group Photo

Here we all are celebrating this Xmas!

From the left is:- My brother Darren, Moi, My Dad and Stepmum Allan & Margaret, My daughter Julia, My brother's partner Jo (and bump!) and in the chairs in the front row my nans, Alice on the left and Florence on the right.

My brother brought along his tripod so we could all get in the photo which is cool, took some test shots to get everyone looking in the same direction and not blinking mid-shot but we got there in the end ;-)