A MUM-of-two has turned a £150 caravan that she bought on eBay into the town’s first mobile tattooing studio.

Padgate resident Sue Underwood has spent more than a month stripping out the bargain caravan in order to convert it into a tattoo studio on wheels.

The caravan is the town’s first legal mobile tattooist, with Sue set to tow it to her clients’ houses in order to ink them.

Sue, who lives in Blenheim Close, said: “I bought the caravan off eBay – I paid £150 for it and sold some bits out of it for about £70, so it’s only cost me about £80.

“It’s taken probably about a month-and-a-half of work and I’ve done it all myself bar a coat of paint.

“A friend of mine painted the caravan for me so I promised him the first tattoo in there – it was his first by me and he couldn’t wait.

“It’s been hard graft – I’ve just been doing a couple of hours here and there and the odd day of work on it alongside normal working.”

Sue, who also co-owns the Kingpin Tattoo Studio in Great Sankey, had a bylaw added to the town’s rules on tattooists in order to open her mobile studio, which received around £1,000 worth of TLC in order to bring it up to scratch.

The 38-year-old added: “There are no mobile tattooists in the town at the moment and they changed the law for me in Warrington to allow me to operate.

“I picked the brains of a woman at environmental health and they got together and decided they could change it by adding on a bylaw to open up that loophole.

“There are other mobile tattooists advertising in Warrington but they are illegal – if you use these people you’re risking infection above all, these people have no insurance and are not trained or registered with environmental health.

“It’s hit and miss whether they know what they’re doing and we’ve seen some people with infections in our studio where Dave from down the pub has done them a tattoo.”

Sue is also planning on taking the caravan to festivals in order to give tattoos to eventgoers.

She added: “I’ve been tattooing for about three years – a friend of mine was a tattooist and I spent so much time in her studio that I thought I would enjoy it.

“I’m glad that it’s all done now – the general response has been that it’s a brilliant idea and I’m ready to start.”