Men usually show off their affection to their better halves by buying them flowers, complimenting them or showering them with gifts, but one Vietnamese man decided to show off his love for his fiancee in a rather unusual way – by tattoing a large portrait of her on his back.

22-year-old Truong Van Lam allegedly spent nearly 24 hours having his girlfriend’s portrait inked on his back, in three separate sessions. The first one, which lasted eight hours, was in November of last year, and sine then he went under the needle two more times, one for over six hours, and the other nine hours. The result is a permanent portrait of his 20-year-old girlfriend, Luong Kha Tran, a tattooed version of a photograph of her.

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A young Canadian man who tattooed most of his body, including his face, hands and legs bright blue, claims that the “whimsical element” has really helped him enjoy his life way more than before.

Donnie Snider, a former forklift driver from Scarborough, in Canada’s Ontario region, started permanently coloring his body blue three years ago, and is now almost completely Smurf-like in color. It all started when he asked his sister to tattoo a part of his leg and foot with the bright blue hue; he liked it so much that he kept on turning part of his body blue, partly because of the psychological impact he experienced. If before he felt  trapped by conformity and had a “lack of confidence”, the permanent makeover really gave him a big boost.

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An Argentinian man desperate to have his tattoo removed just a week after having it done, used a cheese grater to scratch it off, even if it meant letting go of some of his skin in the process.

The 21-year-old man, who preferred to remain anonymous, opted for the unusual and most likely painful tattoo removal method two years ago, but a video and pictures of his arm, before and after, only just went viral, after one of his friends decided to post them online. A resident of the Argentinian city of Mendoza, the protagonist of the viral footage was located by local media reporters and was happy to share his motivation for using a cheese grater to remove a fresh tattoo he had had done on his wrist.

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Looking at the stitched patch tattoos of Eduardo “Duda” Lozano, it’s hard to believe that he only pioneered the new style three months ago. Photos of his amazing creations have been doing the rounds online ever since and he’s already been invited to tattoo conventions all over the world.

The Sao Paolo-based artist has been doing tattoos since 2002, but he only recently got the idea for the stitched patch style, as a throwback to his days working as a logo designer for caps and embroidered shirts. Three months ago, he created a Garfield patch tattoo design as an experiment, and that very same day improved on the new style with a tattoo of Courage the Cowardly Dog. After posting the photos on his Instagram and receiving positive feedback from his fans and other tattoo artists, Lozano realized he was on to something special and decided to focus on stitched patch tattoos going forward. He is now recognized as the pioneer of the style.

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A young man from Vietnam allegedly had his ID card tattooed on his arm, because he always forgot it when going out drinking with his friends and couldn’t prove he was old enough to buy alcohol.

Photos of what looked like an ID card tattooed on someone’s forearm went viral on Vietnamese social media. The person who posted it claimed that a friend of theirs had had it done after becoming exasperated with failing ID checks at nightclubs. He almost always forgot his national identity card at home and couldn’t prove he was old enough to drink. To make sure he never got kicked out of nightclubs again, he decided to have his ID card tattooed on his forearm.

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Kelsey Karter, a 24-year-old singer from New Zealand, has been getting a lot of attention these past couple of days for allegedly getting former One Direction member Harry Styles’ face tattooed on her cheek.

The self-confessed Styles fan shocked her fans three days ago, when she posted a photo of herself with what looked like a tattoo of the English heartthrob inked on the right side of her face. She had previously hinted that she was planning something special to celebrate Styles’ 25th birthday, tweeting “Finally know what I’m getting Harry for his birthday,” but no one expected her to get a facial tattoo of him.

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If you mess up in your marriage, trying to earn back your partner’s trust with an apologetic chest tattoos full of typos is probably not the best idea. A cheating husband learned that the hard way after a photo of his chest tattoo went viral on social media.

A man named Jose L. Torres, presumed to be from Houston, Texas, allegedly wanted to prove to his wife that he was seriously committed to changing his ways, and decided that the best way to do that was to get a statement permanently inked on his chest. In the apology/confession inked nipple to nipple and all the way down to his belly button, the husband starts off by emphasizing that he is the tattoo voluntarily, and then goes on to say that he is doing it as a way to earn back his wife’s trust after causing pain and suffering in their marriage. He then confesses to being a ‘liar’, ‘cheater’ and ‘manipulator’, among other things.

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A Peruvian football fan recently showed his love for his favorite club by getting their jersey tattooed straight on his body. The tattoo took a total of 60 hours to complete, and has been getting mixed reactions on social media.

The unnamed man’s giant tattoo has been getting a lot of attention online since last month, when Jean Pierre Salinas, a tattoo artist at the Lima 13 tattoo studio started posting videos of the making-of process on Facebook. But while some appreciated the fan’s dedication to his beloved club, Alianza Lima, others said that he went too far and even mocked the man, claiming that while the team’s colors were white and blue, his darker skin tone created a brown and blue combination instead.

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A photo of a tattooed man’s hand with the top layer if skin damaged by a minor kitchen burn sparked a heated debate on social media site Reddit last week. That’s because the section where the skin was burned off revealed a tattoo so bright you could swear it was just inked.

The photo, posted by Reddit user uhmodijia, reportedly shows the hand of a “friend of a friend” who had just suffered a minor burn which only affected the top layer of his skin, exposing the dermis. The man had a blue rose tattooed on his skin a while ago, and like all tattoos do in time, it had started to fade. However, the patch of burned skin that had peeled off because of the burn revealed a much more vibrant copy of the same tattoo on his dermis. Apparently, tattoo guns reach deep into the skin, and while the tattoos on the first layer begin to fade just months after they’ve been inked due to multiple factors, they remain vibrant under this first layer of protective skin.

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A young cancer survivor from Argentina recently surprised the doctor he credits for saving his life with a very unusual display of gratitude – a large back tattoo of the surgical oncologist next to the hospital he works at.

A few months ago, Nano Salguero, a native of Alejo Ledesma, an Argentinian town located 333 kilometers southeast of the regional capital of Córdoba, was diagnosed with colon cancer by a local oncologist. He was  immediately referred to the Hospital de Clinicas in the regional capital for emergency surgery, where he was operated on by Dr. Paul Lada, a surgical oncologist with 42 years of experience under his belt. Nano’s operation was a success, and even though he is technically still in recovery, he recently showed his gratitude to Dr. Lada by sending him a photo of a large tattoo of his smiling face next to the hospital he works at that he had inked on his back.

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A Russian man who reportedly has the habit of scamming tattoo artists by refusing to pay for their work recently got “scammer” permanently tattooed on his forehead by his latest victim.

A photo of the smiling unnamed man showing off his unusual forehead tattoo was posted online last week by Russian tattoo artist Roman Bikeev, a.k.a. Mr Amsterdam. In the photo caption, Bikeev explained that the man had come in for a neck tattoo, but later said that he had no intention of paying for the artwork and nonchalantly admitted to pulling the same trick on other tattoo artist in Ufa, the capital city of the Republic of Baskortostan. So the tattoo artist decided to take his revenge by inking “Кидала” (Russian for ‘scammer) on the man’s forehead, along with his autograph.

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Naz Mila, a young reality TV and social media star from Azerbaijan, recently attracted international media attention, after posting a photo of a huge tattoo on the side of her body. Just take a good look at it and you’ll understand why.

Just in case the font is giving you trouble, the black ink tattoo running down the side of Naz’s body reads ‘I can judge a single god with my wrongs and wrongs‘. Doesn’t quote sound like the kind of thing someone would permanently have inked on their body, does it?

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A young Ohio mother was recently arrested for allowing her 10-year-old son to get a permanent tattoo in unsanitary conditions, from a 16-year-old unlicensed artist. She later claimed she got simply got tired of her son asking for a tattoo.

34-year-old Nikki Dickinson was arrested last week in Bellefontaine, Ohio, after a disturbing video showing her young son getting a tattoo on his arm went viral on social media. Dickinson doesn’t appear in the video simply because she is the one recording the footage, but she admitted to police that she gave her parental consent for the tattooing, because her son had been pleading with her to get a tattoo of the first initial of his name. It’s unclear whether she knew that the 16-year-unlicensed tattoo artist had a history of malpractice and once gave a client MRSA (a Stafilococus aureus strain) from a dirty needle.

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Jesse Rix has been tattooing since 2005 and specializes in a wide range of styles, from realism to nature pieces, but it’s hid geometric, three-dimensional optical illusion tattoos that really get people talking. Some of his works are so trippy that you could swear you’re looking at a fantastic world underneath a person’s skin.

In most of his incredible tattooed optical illusions, Rix uses geometrical shapes like hexagons and cubes to “remove” pieces of skin from his subjects and reveal the colorful world beneath. However, his art and skills are constantly evolving, as shown in some of his latest works, which feature windows inked on to his subjects through which you can see the universe beneath their skin. The New Hampshire-based artist is obviously a master of the trompe-l’œil technique, and some of his tattoos are so insanely realistic they can be kind of creepy to look at.

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The Russian branch of Domino’s Pizza was curious to know just how much people love their pies, so they came up with a promotion that challenged fans to get a tattoo of the Domino’s logo in a visible spot on their bodies, for the chance to win 100 free pizzas per year, for 100 years. The response was overwhelming.

When Domino’s launched their unusual promotion, on August 31st, they probably expected just a few die-hard pizza fans to take them up on their offer, but they were inundated by hundreds of photos of fresh tattoos on social media, in the first couple of days. In an attempt to stave off the wave of tattoos and requests for free pizzas, the company had to clarify that only the first 350 people to get the tattoo – which had to be at least 2 cm (0.79 inches) in length – and post it on social media would get the 10,000 free pizzas. They also released an image clarifying the visible parts of the body where candidates could get the tattoo, but that didn’t help things too much.

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