LIFESTYLE: Tips for buying your first home

So as you may or may not know, I've just bought myself (with the help of my husband of course) a lovely family home.
At 25 (Dann is 29) we're pretty pleased with ourselves to have our shit together enough to buy a place that is ours.
I'm not going to lie, it is a pretty scary thing, and we actually feel more like responsible adults in £115,000 of debt than we did when we got married! But it doesn't need to be a completely daunting experience.
I thought I'd share some of our hints and tip for buying your first home - and share some of the images we had taken by Radian who interviewed me for their blog about our buying experience.

BLOGGING: Illustrated Teacup is changing direction

I've recently had a little break from blogging so posts have been a little sparse at the beginning of June - I was on holiday too but I kind of lost my mojo a little.
Anyway, whilst on my blogging break I had a little think about the direction of this blog.

I love writing about tattoos, and judging from my top ranking posts, you love reading about them too, but I also want to share other parts of my life. I guess it comes down to the future.
My home and dream is to start a family soon, and I want to be able to blog about our adventures, so I've decided to start that transition now.

I will still blog about tattoos as they are a huge part of my life, including new tattoos, interviews and conventions, but I will be posting a lot more lifestyle, fashion and beauty posts, and eventually some family orientated posts too. Think Love Taza, with a tattoo twist (I'm kind of in love with this family)!

TATTOOS: Why price isn't everything

It can be a bit of a touchy subject in  almost any situation... the question of cost.

And it is especially true when discussing tattoos.

No one wants to be ripped off, especially for something that you are going to have to live with for the rest of your life. And it is so easy to get bogged down by the price of everything in today's society.
But with tattoos, price should not be the determiner.

The saying goes

"Good tattoos aren't cheap and cheap tattoos aren't good"

And to a certain extent this is very true.

Many badly designed or created tattoos are from people or 'scratchers' who have had no training, and bought a tattoo machine from the internet and are 'working' from their kitchen. In this instance, you really are paying for what you get. It will be cheap because the 'work' is likely to be substandard and potentially risky.