For the past 20 years Houston-based Larry Da Leopard has covered his entire body with over 1,000 leopard spots to achieve his goal of becoming a “manimal”, part man, part animal. He refers to himself as The Leopard Man.

Larry says he started getting tattoos with his friends in a time when skin inking was considered taboo, as a way of acting rebellious, but he never stopped. Even after covering his entire body, including the years and private parts, with tattoos, he considers himself a work in progress. He constantly adds new leopard spots wherever they still fit, and retouches his older ones if they fade after prolonged sun exposure. Although he says his parents cried the first time they saw his face full of permanent leopard spots and admits they make him look like a cartoon character, Larry is proud of the way he looks and likes showing off his skin art in public. He often goes out wearing only a Tarzan-inspired loin cloth and an animal-print coat, and hands out fliers for his tattoo parlor to passers-by.

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If you’re going to get a tattoo, why not go for something truly beautiful instead of the usual tribal, heart, dragon or those tacky Chinese characters that people seem to love so much. Five years ago, French tattoo master Xoïl aka Loïc adopted a new artsy style called the “Photoshop Style”, which really gives “skin art” a whole new meaning.

Xoïl was born in a very small village in Southern France, where his father worked as a mason, creating beautiful things out of stuff other people just threw away. Watching his father at work inspired him to leave the rural life behind and start making cool stuff himself. He never had a formal apprenticeship under a tattoo artist, because they all had these “old-school crazy ideas” he just didn’t recognize at the time, so he simply hung out at tattoo shops picking up the basics and developing his unique style. And it shows in his current artworks. Xoïl’s style is so distinct from other skin artists’ that you can recognize one of his pieces on sight. Combining clients’ ideas with stamp-like textures, typewriter-inspired fonts and geometric patterns, the French master creates incredibly beautiful works of permanent body art that have caught the attention of tattoo enthusiasts around Europe and the US.

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A New York City real estate company has offered employees a 15% pay raise if they get a tattoo of its logo on their bodies. So far, 40 of the 800 employees took the deal and got a permanent Rapid Realty tattoo.

People usually get tattoos to show off their personality, but for the employees of Rapid Realty getting inked was simply a quick and sure way to get a 15% permanent bonus. Company owner Anthony Lolli has been more than happy to pay for tattooing fees, but doesn’t take credit for the idea. Surprisingly enough, it all started when one of his employees decided to do it for free. “He calls me up,” Lolli said “‘Hey Anthony, I’m getting the logo on me.’ I show up at the shop and I’m like ‘this is cool, how can I repay you?’” And it all pretty much snowballed from there, and now 40 of his 800 workers have the Rapid Realty logo inked somewhere on their bodies. There are no restrictions regarding the size and location of the tattoo, and that got people interested. For example, Brooke Koropatnick got hers behind the ear and says: “I had a paycheck coming in what was a substantial amount of money different, so it was nice.” Stephanie Barry went under the needle two weeks ago and got a nice bonus for every successful transaction. “I was like, why am I throwing my money away when I could give myself from a $25,000 to $40,000 for the same amount of work?” Barry told reporters.

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Remember Cathy Ward, the woman who made the news back in 2011 for getting a full-back Twilight tattoo honoring the popular vampire movie which had helped her lose weight? Well, the avid fan of the Twilight trilogy didn’t stop there, and now her upper body is almost completely covered with Twilight tattoos.

51-year-old Cathy Ward, from Reading, England, got her first Twilight tattoo as a way to show her appreciation for the movie that helped her lose six dress sizes, in 2008. The supermarket worker says she started watching the movies and reading the books, which provided a distraction from eating. Then she started exercising on her cross trainer while watching the vampire flick, and soon she was back in shape. But the tattoos didn’t stop with the weight loss. After the full-back tattoo featuring Bella, Edward and Jacob, the woman moved on to her arms, which are now covered with portraits of Carlisle Cullen, Jasper Hale and Renesmee Cullen, as well as a quote from Taylor Lautner’s werewolf character, Jacob, from Eclipse: “it would be as easy as breathing with me”. She also has the Cullen crest tattooed across her chest. So far, Cathy has spent around 83 hours and £7,000 ($10,900) on tattoos, and doesn’t plan on stopping until she is covered head to toe in Twilight ink, except for her face and hands.

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One of the most bizarre beauty procedure I’ve recently come across is tattooing the lips pink, which is apparently very popular in the African county of Nigeria. The main reason for this practice seems to be that women find men with pink lips more attractive.

The other day, someone emailed me a link to a video of a Nigerian guy getting his lower lip tattooed pink, in what looks like a very unhygienic tattoo parlor. To be honest, I thought it was just an isolated case, a guy who just wanted to be different, like the girl who tattooed Drake’s name on her forehead. But it got me intrigued, and after doing some research online, it seems this really is a trend among Nigerian men. According to Battabox.com, who documented the procedure in the short video, young men pay around 7,000 Nigerian Naira ($45) to have their black lips cleaned of excess skin and tattooed with a pink paint to make them lighter. Although the guy in the video didn’t show any signs of pain, having a sensitive spot like the lips tattooed can’t be very pleasant.

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I’ve read about people getting tattoos on the weirdest places of their bodies, but this one just beats them all. Never before have I heard of people getting their gums tattooed. Not in any particular design, but just a uniform black color. This is actually a popular practice among women in West African countries like Senegal, because over there apparently, black gums are a thing of beauty.

Tattooed black gums are especially popular in small towns and villages like Thies, in Senegal. Women here practice this ancient tradition to get a smile that is considered more attractive. Of course, the process is nothing short of painful. Marieme, from Thies, is one such young girl to have gone through the procedure. I watched a documentary on YouTube that covered her journey from having regular gums to the more desirable black variety. Before she went for it, she said, “I want black gums to obtain a more beautiful smile. It’s become an obsession. I do fear the procedure. But I’ll be OK.”

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Boonyong Luangjumpol, also known as Ajarn Ton, was recently arrested in Thailand’s Yanglad district after he allegedly gave local teens magic tattoos and told them they made them invincible. Unsurprisingly, they wanted to try out their ink armor and engaged in a series of brawls.

Sak Yant is an ancient type of Thai tattoo said to bestow the bearer with mystical powers. It incorporates Buddhist prayers called Mantras or Katas that will invoke supernatural powers. These magic spells were originally inscribed on pieces of cloth, and centuries ago, Thai soldiers would wear Yant-printed jackets to offer them extra protection in battle. After Budhism was adopted as a religion in Thailand, it became common for devotees to have Sak Yant tattoos etched into their skin. Even today, many Thai men believe in their mystical powers, and have one or more tattoos inscribed on their bodies. There are also lots of stories of people sporting Sak Yant tattoos who were shot at close range without even having their skin pierced, or horrific car accidents from which tattoo bearers emerged unscathed. But as recent events have proven, they don’t always work.

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If the name Hostgator Dotcom sounds familiar it’s because it’s also the name of a popular Internet hosting company. The man formerly known as Billy Gibby sold the rights to his name to the highest bidder, in addition to selling advertising space in the form of permanent tattoos on his face and body.

We’ve seen similar gimmicks in the past. Just last year we reported about Pat Vaillacourt, a Canadian man who charges $35 to tattoo people and business site addresses on his body, and earlier this year there was the story of Tina Beznec, from New Zealand, who auctioned off a portion of her buttock to be tattooed with whatever the winner desired, in an atempt to raise money for unpaid bills and a trip to Australia. But the case of Hostgator Dotcom is a lot more interesting. The Anchorage-based man started offering advertising spots on his body during the mid 2000s, in a time when the practice had become really popular. It was an easy way to fund his boxing career, so he could fight to support the cause of organ donation, and he even set his sights on claiming a Guinness record for most corporate logos tattooed on a human body. He’s still selling advertising space on his face today, in a constant selfless effort to support his family. In 2010, he took another extreme step and sold off the rights to his original name to the highest bidder, which happened to be Hostgator.com.

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Meet Vladimir Franz, probably the most tattooed man to ever run for president in any country of the world. The eccentric candidate is currently gathering signatures in order to be able to candidate for president of the Czech Republic in 2013.

53-year-old Vladimir Franz has what many people call a striking appearance. His face and body are covered with tattoos, which actually makes him look blue, literally blue. But that’s not all that makes him stand out from the rest of the candidates. He’s the perfect example of why people should never “judge a book by its cover”. You couldn’t tell by looking at him, but Franz is actually a drama professor at one of the most prestigious universities in Prague, a talented painter and a successful opera composer. As a young man, he also graduated from law school and got a doctorate in the field of law, but chose not to pursue a career as a lawyer or magistrate during the communist Czechoslovakian regime. Instead, he turned his atention towards art, and after studying painting and music, he became a university professor as well. He is well know in the Czech Republic for initiating a serious of cultural movements for the country’s youth, which makes him very popular among young voters.

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Ok, so you’ve bought all of Miley’s albums, you know all her songs by heart, and your room is practically covered with poster of her. You still have nothing on this guy, because let’s face it, nothing says “I Love Miley Cyrus” than 15 tattoos related to her.

Showing off your obsession through tattoos is really nothing new. Remember the lady who got a fullback Twilight tat, or the dude covered in tattoos of Neytiri from Avatar? Well, they’re nowhere as strange as this particular Miley Cyrus fan. The guy took some photos of himself wearing a Miley hat and showing off all of his 15 creepy tattoos and posted them on Twitter. And I’m not talking about some pimple-face teen who got drunk one night and made the mistake of a lifetime. This is a full-grown man with a passion for the 19-year-old pop star.

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A while ago we did a story about a boy who turned orange after eating carrots. Now that I’ve come to know about carrot-obsessed Zizi Howell, I think she’d do anything to trade places with the boy. Unfortunately, she can’t really change skin colors, but she’s settled for tattooing carrots all over her body. She has 35 carrot tattoos in all, including a 24-carrot arm band (no, it’s not made of Gold), four on her other arm, 6 on her back and a huge one on her stomach. Her only mission in life is to have “the most carrots in the world.”

But it’s not just the tattoos, carrots flood almost every part of her life. Every item in the Californian woman’s house is modeled after the root vegetable. Fridge magnets, tea-pots, storage boxes, dressers, soft toys, they’re all themed after carrots. She even has carrot paper-towel-holders and carrot slippers. Her home has over 1000 pieces of carrot memorabilia, and she spends five hours a day organizing them. And at night, she’d rather use carrots as curlers for her hair. The only music Zizi listens to is by Carrot Top, a punk metal musician. At concerts, she wears belts that strap about 600 carrots to her chest.

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A German man loves dogs so much that he wants to build a museum dedicated to St. Bernard dogs. So what does he do to raise the money? Why rent out his face, of course. The idea seems so simple, I wonder why people don’t do it all the time. Maybe because no one wants to walk around with a bunch of advertisements TATTOOED on their face. But Uwe Troschel has no such qualms, so he’s perfectly happy to rent out sections of his face for companies to place their advertisements on.

Each section comes at a price of its own. So to put up an ad on Troschel’s forehead costs 50,000  euro, and each cheek, 20,000 euro. The nose is priced at 2,000, and if any company is interested in the entire face, it would set them back a whopping 100,000 euro. His intentions are commendable, but I’m not sure this is the right way to go about helping his four-legged friends. After all, when this is all said and done, they might not even recognize him…

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Hair loss and male-pattern baldness are pretty common, and thousands of men opt for hair transplants each year in an attempt to cover up that balding patch. Hair transplant procedures can be pretty darn expensive and burn a hole right through your pocket. But now, there’s an innovative, cheaper and permanent alternative – hair tattoos. Just a few hours of pain, and you’re set for life.

Hair tattoos are the brainchild of Ian Watson. When Watson was in his mid-twenties, he lost his brother and developed alopecia due to the resulting stress. Worried about his hair loss and desperate to do something about it, he asked his brother’s widow, Ranbir Rai-Watson to draw dots on his scalp using a fine pen. He hoped that the dots would produce the effect of a cropped haircut. When she was finished, the duo knew their silly idea was actually worth something.

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Timur, a 24-year-old tattoo artist from Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan, caused a lot of controversy after he posted photos and a video of him tattooing his pet cat, a hairless Sphynx, on the Internet.

Apparently, Timur wanted his beloved cat, Coco, to have a similar tattoo as the one he had done on his chest. So he just put the hairless feline to sleep for an hour and unleashed his artistic talent on her little chest. Proud of his crazy idea, he videotaped the whole process and took some photos of the finished artwork and posted them on his VKontakte (Russian Facebook) profile. As you can imagine, animal rights activists weren’t very impressed with his achievement, and began accusing Timur of animal cruelty. Although the young artist tattooed Coco under the supervision of a veterinarian, animal lovers claim the Sphynx was still abused for no reason because every time a cat is put under she loses about a year of her life, and because the healing process for the tattoo is very painful. Also, if any paint got into her blood she could get very sick, and even die.

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If you’ve ever wanted to sport one of those sloppy jail tattoos, but didn’t really want to go through the whole jail experience, we’ve got just the guy for you – he goes by “Synyster Ink” and he’s probably the world’s worst tattoo artist.

I’m still not sure if this guy is a genius or someone who’s hands should be tied behind his back so he doesn’t scar anymore gullible people. There are people who actually consider his work to be genuine art, but not too many. The majority of those who’ve seen Synyster Ink’s tattoos on Facebook thinks they’re absolute crap, and recommend he find a job at McDonald’s or Walmart, instead of tattooing. He’s a pretty resilient guy, though, as thousands of negative comments haven’t stopped him from “following his”dream and creating “original” permanent tattoos. There’s not a lot to say about a tattoo artist who apparently can’t even draw a straight line, except that he’s based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and that he found plenty of people naive enough to let him work his magic on their bodies. How this guy didn’t get hit with a lawsuit is beyond me.

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