Anyone who’s had one will admit that getting it inked really does hurt like hell. It’s not for those with a low pain tolerance. Afterwards speech is initially difficult but fans of tongue tattoos always say that the ability to surprise people by sticking out their tongue makes the whole process worthwhile.

Here’s a round-up of 19 crazy tongue tattoos. Would the pain be worth it? We’ll let you be the judge of that.

This first tattoo is stunningly detailed.

Don’t know what someone is saying? With this tattoo you can just open your mouth:

When you’re literally speechless the exclamation mark comes in handy!

Here are three friends who got tongue tattoos of an insect to illustrate their bond:

A leopard-like creature:

A heart – simple, but cute. A heart is always recommended over and above someone’s name. A cover-up tattoo for your tongue could be very tricky, not to mention painful!

This girl opted for a tree design to illustrate her commitment to preserving the environment:

We’re not sure what happened with the tattoo below. Perhaps the tattoo artist got it wrong? Or we have very different tastes.

Advocating world peace is certainly a cause worth going through the tongue tattooing pain barrier for:

This is a good tattoo for when you hear something jaw-dropping:

This one below is a cute one, we approve!

Another painful tattoo and a design which isn’t particularly clear:

If you’re looking for tribal tongue tattoos then you won’t find many better examples than this one:

Hola – tongue tattoos also exist in Spain:

Dude! Now this is a cool tongue tattoo:

A keen cyclist or most likely an environmentalist is behind this one:

This tongue tattoo is truly stunning. We can only guess that it’s computer imagery rather than a real one. However, if it is real then hats-off to this person, they’d win the award for the best tongue tattoo by a huge distance:

How things have changed since the time of the dinosaurs:

Finally, it’s the 19th and final tattoo. If you’re a girl who’s afraid of spiders then this is one guy to cross off your list:

1) We start with the Pisces sign which Rihanna has tattooed behind her ear. No prizes for guessing the meaning of this one… yes, her birth date makes her a Pisces!

2) On her ankle she has a couple of music notes. Given how she is now arguably the world’s biggest pop star we’d expect at least one of her tattoos to reference music!

3) The Arabic writing on her rib cage says “Al Hurria fi Al Maseeh” – this translates to “Freedom in God”. Although not deeply religious Rihanna does show an interest in it:

4) The next of her tattoos that we look at is an Egyptian Falcon tattoo on her right ankle. The falcon is in the shape of a handgun. She explained the meaning of the tattoo on Twitter saying, “Falcon: a light that shines in the darkness! Never close their eyes during sleep.”

5) The trail of stars on the back of her neck have become a big fashion fit with many of her fans being inspired to copy this tattoo:

6) Going vertically down her hip is a tattoo of Hindu scripture prayer. It translates roughly to “long suffering, truthfulness, self-restraint, inward calm, fear and fearlessness”. It’s not of the whole prayer though as the part which mentions ‘pleasure, pain, birth, death’ is omitted, some claim accidentally:

7) This tattoo is believed to be a symbol of friendship, plus Rihanna is also a big fan of star tattoos!

8) Skull and crossbones are always popular tattoos to choose but Rihanna has added a cute feminine touch to hers with the pink bow:

9) There’s always a place for a Love tattoo and Rihanna has chosen her place to be on the side of one of her middle fingers:

10) Ironically Rihanna got her ‘Shhh…..’ tattoo just before the launch of her album ‘Talk That Talk’ was released:

11) This gun as originally in line to be two guns, one on each arm, but instead Rihanna opted for one gun on her rib cage, as her tattoo artist Bang Bang explained, “I really wanted to put it here [on her arms]… She loved ‘em. But, Cover Girl wouldn’t have liked it much… and they pay the bills! Ended up doing it on her ribs.”

12) Here’s a tattoo of some wise words – “Never A Failure, Always A Lesson” – highlighting how the key in life is to learn from failures rather than get down about them:

13) On her shoulder is the birth date 4th November 1986. Not hers but the birthday of her best friend and manager:

14) Rihanna got this tribal tattoo when she was in New Zealand. Explaining its meaning she said, “It’s tribal. It represents strength and love. It’s their traditional way of tattooing. I always wanted [one]… [But] it hurt like hell!”

15) This is a French saying ‘Rebelle Fleur’ – it means rebellious flower. Rihanna is known for having a rebellious streak!

16) This tattoo is a little mysterious. It’s a script on her back just above her bikini line but the meaning of it isn’t publicly known.

17) She has a small cross on her neck. Her tattoo artist Bang Bang said of it, “We did a very fine small cross directly on her collarbone. She said her cross meant a lot to her and she totally loved it!”

18) Her ‘Thug Life’ tattoo was inspired by rapper Tupac (2Pac) Shakur’s tattoo, who had these same words inked on his stomach before he was killed in 1996:

19) Finally, last but far from least is the tattoo of Goddess Isis which Rihanna has between her breasts. The name Iris means ‘Throne’ and she’s known for being the perfect mother and wife. This gave her the title of goddess of children but she’s also been known as being the protector of the dead which is possibly why Rihanna has her tattoo.

The next tattoo is one for the older generation. It’s the snowman from Calvin and Hobbes, a cartoon strip which was published over a decade from 1985 until 1995.

A nice Christmas scene here below, who could object to that?

This is a fantastic Christmas tree below. We’re yet to see a better one but as always if you know of one feel free to send it in to us.

Father Christmas? Or a zombie? Or both? We don’t know except that the tattoo below is definitely a big FAIL!

We like the next tattoo. A lot of creativity has gone into it, certainly inspired by Darwin with a Christmas theme. Is that what Santa was like according to Darwin’s theory? Or was he able to avoid the evolutionary process?

The next one is our all-time favourite Christmas tattoo. It’s brilliant – a re-mark of the famous scene in Die Hard but with a Christmas theme thanks to the festive tape. Whoever thought of this tattoo deserves a huge congratulations, we love it!

It’s the Grinch, clearly someone isn’t too fond of this time of year!

Simple, yet cute. We like the holly – in fact, it’s perhaps surprising that there aren’t more holly tattoos around.

This is Jack Skellington as a snowman. Jack is the character from the film The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Now here’s someone who doesn’t mess around. Why have separate tattoos of Santa, Jesus and the Easter Bunny when you can combine them all into one single tattoo?

As reindeers go they don’t come much better than the tattoo below. Interestingly for once Rudolph wasn’t chosen.

Fans of Star Wars and Christmas will no doubt deem Santa Yoda as the ultimate Christmas tattoo. We almost agree, it’s a good one, but the Die Hard tattoo above just shades it for us.

Ok, so whoever opted for the tattoo below has clearly had some bad presents from Santa over the years…

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the elves running around working hard in the background. We’re not sure about the two below though, they look like they would be elf outcasts.

Bill Porter, the wrestler that’s better known as “the Southern Grizzly”, decided to help out the Toys for Tots charity with this tattoo, whilst also staging a wrestling event in aid of the charity. Hats off to Bill, you can’t knock a tattoo when it’s done for charity.

If you’ve watched Elf then you’ll instantly recognise Will Ferrell and if you haven’t you’ll probably recognise him anyway. He was a great character and has been remembered below with a great tattoo.

Tim Hunt’s Pacific Tattoo from livlin productions on Vimeo.

or check it out on vimeo directly at: http://vimeo.com/19811815

LEGO people come in all different styles these days, making it easy to make a tiny version of yourself that can live in your LEGO castle, and drive a LEGO car. Unfortunately, tiny LEGO you couldn’t get inked… until now. Barcelona’s Grey Agency, the people behind Pilot Extra-Fine ball-pens have come up with a great way to show off just how fine the tip on those pens is, and customize your LEGO people at the same time. They are showing off some pretty sweet tats on some very tiny LEGO people. These LEGO people have sleeve tattoos, tramp stamps, and chest tattoos. Now all we need is a way to pierce LEGO people, and we’ll be all set.

If you’ve always wanted to know what your lady flower would look like with an actual flower tattooed around it, but you didn’t want to make such a permanent and drastic move, you’re in luck. A new type of temporary tattoo specially designed for vaginal use has been created. The tattoo is applied using airbrushed ink, which makes for a easy and painless experience. Currently, the only place (that we know of anyway) where you can get a temporary vagina tattoo is Completely Bare Spa in New York, but we’re hoping they’ll start showing up in other places soon.

If you’ve spent any time reading this blog, you probably know that we’re big fans of tattoos based on bizarre subject matter. That’s why we were excited when All Things Cupcake started posting pictures of cupcake tattoos submitted by their users.

The two tats above were submitted to All Things Cupcake by two different people. The one on the left belongs to Dana, who is very much in love with the word “cupcake”. She uses it as a nickname for just about everyone in her life, including family, friends, and her dog. The one on the right belongs to Andrea. When asked about the unconventional razor as a cupcake topping, Andrea said “life isn’t all sweet, sometimes it can be really painful”.  Well, eating a cupcake topped with a razor blade would definitely be painful, so she definitely made her point.

If you have a cupcake related tattoo, send it over to All Things Cupcake, and hey, while you’re at it, submit it to our site too!

There are a lot of bad reasons to get a tattoo. Getting a tat because you love your significant other, enjoy a TV show, or because you’re really into a certain celebrity is a bad idea. Getting a tattoo to help charity, on the other hand, is a great idea. Canadian tattoo shop Dead City Studios is offering $60 pink ribbon tattoos from July 19th – 24th. One hundred percent of the profits are going straight to their local branch of the Canadian Cancer Society.

We’re big fans of tattoos that support charities, and if we lived even remotely near Dead City Studios, we’d be getting pink ribbon tats for sure. Their goal is to tattoo 100 people, for a total of $6,000. That’s a pretty hefty donation! We strongly encourage any readers in the area to go and get your pink ribbon ASAP!

It may seem silly to get a celebrity’s face tattooed to your arm, but hey, if that celebrity touched your life in some way, then go for it. Just don’t go to the tattoo shops that did the work featured in Ranker’s latest tattoo related list. They compiled a list of the 25 terrible tattoos of celebrities’ faces. The list features such memorable faces as David Spade, Alan Alda, and Willie Nelson, and every face on the list is more horrifying than the one before.

It’s easy to imagine someone getting a tattoo of a celebrity’s face, but it’s hard to imagine anyone being happy with the celebrity face tattoos on that list. We’ll be having nightmares about that Tony Danza tattoo for the rest of our lives.

Buzzfeed has compiled a list of 25 Star Trek tattoos that just shouldn’t exist. The list has everything from bad drawings of your favorite characters, to a tattoo written in Klingon. Some of them actually aren’t so bad, but most of them will make even the most dedicated Trekkie cringe. The two tats pictured above are perfect examples of cringe-worthy Trek tats. Spock-Jesus? Really? And just who are those faces above the Enterprise supposed to be anyway?If you don’t think it’ll damage your nerd-pride too badly, check out the entire list and see what there is to see. We strongly recommend making your way to the very bottom. There’s a surprise waiting there you won’t want to miss.