The Brighton Tattoo Convention is fast approaching! With the 6th installment of the show taking place February 16th and 17th we're going to take a quick look in the buildup to the convention at a handfull of the tattooers working this show who we think you should be getting tattooed by!


Bert Thomas is hands down one of the most under rated tattooers working today. He turns out great work day in day out and has managed to have flown under the radar till recently. The whole crew at his Southend on Sea shop, Skynyard are well worth checking out!

I first met Job De Quay at the Lisbon convention in 2011. Aside from being one of more interesting people I've had the pleasure of meeting he's also a great tattooer turning out solid work from Angelique Houtkamps Salon Serpent in Amsterdam.

Chris Dettmer needs no introduction, he's been top of his game for many years now with an often replicated, never equaled style his work is a dark take on traditional imagery. I've been tattooed by him and you should too.

El Bara of True Love tattoo in Madrid,  is one of Spains finest tattooers. Equally adept at traditional and Japanese styles, his work is top notch. 

The Brighton Tattoo Convention is fast approaching! With the 6th installment of the show taking place February 16th and 17th we're going to take a quick look at a handfull of the tattooers working this show who we think you should be getting tattooed by!

Local tattooer Craig Ridley of Brightons Angelic Hell has been turning out great work for awhile now and is well worth checking out.  

Ross Nagle is an Irish based tattooer working out of Limericks, Allstar Ink. He can be found across the globe at the finest conventions and guest spotting at shops like Love/Hate in NYC and LTW in Barcelona.

I first encountered Robert Aalbers work at the Liverpool convention a few years back. He does clean, solid traditional out of his aptly titled shop Clean Solid Tattoo in Holland.

Richie Clarke holds things down in Liverpool. His shop Forever True plays hosts to great guest artists like Hexa and Joel Madberg and keeps the city covered for solid clean traditional work.

and finally, Sa Jin of Yushi Tattoo in Korea. We've been posting Sa Jin's work here for quite a while and it's great to see him finally make his way to the UK with his unique take on traditional imagery.

We've made some changes to S&D today. From now on the URLs www.swallowsndaggers.com and www.respect-tradition.com will both go straight to our webstore. For those of you wishing to go straight to the tattoo blog you should use www.swallowsndaggers.net or click the "BLOG" link on the webstore. The webstore and t-shirts currently fund the websites existence as hosting costs increase with traffic. For everyone who wants to pick something up you can get a 10% discount on your order with discount code "SNDCHANGES" at checkout.

We're open to submissions again but in a different way. Anyone on instagram can tag their images #sndblog.

We're still on various social networks such as;

Facebook: www.facebook.com/swallowsndaggers
Twitter: www.twitter.com/swallowsdaggers
Instagram: www.instagram.com/swallowsndaggers
Tumblr: http://swallowsndaggers.tumblr.com

The Born Weird book by the good people at the Yellow Beak Press who also put out the Milton Zeis book is up for pre-order as of January 25th (we're a little late to the game since we've been away at a tradeshow). The 11x14 120 page book is limited to 2,000 copies and was put together in connection with Craig Brown of Historic Tattoo in Portland. The books pieces have also been on display in Upper Playgrounds Portland store. The books are due to ship late March/Early April and feature some great tattooers like Danny Reed, Aaron Coleman, Bart Bingham, Jeff Rassier and Tim Lehi.

Dan Williams (King Arthurs) (@costadan)

Rich Hadley (OSC) (@richhadley)

Xam (The Family Business) (@xamthespaniard)

Vincent Scully (Jinxproof)

Phil Hatchet-Yau (Tahiti Felix's Master Tattoo) (@philhatchetyau)

Franz Stefanik (Anchors) (@franzstefanik)

The Brighton Tattoo Convention, this year takes place over the Valentines weekend of Feb 16/17th,  and see’s a move down to the centre of Brighton seafront and sets up camp in the Hilton Brighton Metropole, Southern Englands largest Exhibition centre …., and is all set to be even bigger and better than previous events. 

Established in 2008, The Brighton Tattoo Convention has now evolved into the premier opening show to the hugely busy European tattoo convention calendar, bringing a glorious burst of alternate culture and multi coloured life to the heart of the English winter.

This year, it's doubling in size in size to over 350 world class artists, 10 live bands plus galleries, bars, performances, seminars and much more!

Artists from as far afield as the USA, Australia, Japan, Scandinavia, Italy and even Nepal will be working on dedicated tattoo fans all weekend. High on the list of people to see are: geometric dotwork artist Jondix from LTW in Barcelona, Californian black & grey masters Jose Lopez, Big Sleeps, Norm Will Rise & Boog,  plus traditional New Zealand hand work from Brent McCown, alongside Brighton’s very own Phil Kyle, Ade, Stu Francis, James Robinson & Woody to name but a few

Those with spending money left will find trade suppliers, vendors, vintage clothing, bespoke jewellery, unique one off artwork, show merchandise, haircuts, designer latex and much, much more.

However, the biggest show of all will be that offered by the thousands of visitors themselves, so come join us, and blow away the winter blues…

Add in, free entry for under 16’s  a Friday night pre show party, and a free Sunday aftershow party hosted by the Brighton Rockabilly Rumble Club, all held on site at The Hilton, it’s a weekend not to be missed!

For more info check out www.brightontattoo.com. Tickets are available from www.gingertickets.com, priced at £20 per day or £35 for the weekend. 

The Ink Stories series is continuing with a focus on London based tattooer Rodrigo Souto who tattoos out of Black Garden Tattoo in Covent Garden. Rodrigo is one of the top Japanese style tattooers in the UK and turns out stunning large scale work. This video is well worth checking out as are the two previous instalments on Simon Erl & Daniel Ronson.

Joel Long from Bolder Ink will be guest spotting at the infamous SMITH STREET TATTOO PARLOR in Brooklyn, New York from Febuary 1st through the 3rd. Contact Smith Street at (718) 643-0463 to schedule an appointment. You can also contact Joel through his website, or at joellong@joeldlong.com.

Don't sleep on this one. 

Our good pal, Kevin Leary of Family Tattoo in Chicago has just put out this flash sheet. The sheet is based on what is the greatest tv show of all time, HBO masterpiece The Wire. Featuring references and nods to various, characters and sayings from the show this is a must have. This 16*20 giclee print, is a pre-order. If you want a copy send $75USD + $5 shipping (USA) or $10 (international) to kevinlearytattoo@gmail.com