I came to Ace (Alvaro Cardenas) for a cover up on a garter tattoo on my thigh. I wanted a bouquet of flowers, assorted colors, styles & sizes. As an artist, he claimed what I was asking for would not work. I trusted his opinion as an artist. I am not a tattoo artist, I am not 100% sure of what can be done as a tattoo, much less as a cover up. I had a friend who had several pieces of ink done by him, so I went ahead & began my tattoo. Mistake 1. I asked for sunflowers along the side of my hip & thigh, & a bouquet of flowers wrapped along my entire thigh. My sunflowers came out as regular flowers. The outline looked good, so I allowed him to continue to work on me. At the next session, he tattooed the color. He did each of the 4 large flowers one solid color. I voiced that flowers are usually multicolored to add dimension & make the colors pop. I was told, "it's not done, I'm going to add more black to make them stand out." 2. While the first portion of my tattoo was healing we began on the top half of my thigh. At the start of this session, I once again showed him examples of the bouquet I wanted. He has me lay down while he tattoos. I sit up, & to my horror, he tattooed 5 more of the exact same flower. I tell him this is not what i wanted & we did not agree on this. He tells me, "i thought this would look better." Should have been the end, but I expected him to "fix" it. 3. I go in for the color on the flowers. Again, does one solid color, not even completely colored in. I tell him it looks childish & i don't think we should continue our work. He tells me, "it's not done. Trust me, i know what I'm doing." 4. I am skeptical to continue. I once again voice all of my concerns. He "pretends" to understand. We get a stencil done for my ship & octopus tattoo, and begin my other thigh with an underwater tattoo. He COMPLETELY ruins the octopus. The tentacles look absolutely nothing like the pictures I had shown him, nor do they look like the stencil he had put on me. 5. Payment was agreed as "half to start, half to finish." He tells me before the last session, "I just paid all my bills, so I'm gonna need you to bring more money." That was not the agreement; your "bills" are not my concern. I attempted to be a nice person & gave another partial payment. At that same session, he adds "filigree" to the flowers on the top of my thigh. Problem being, for the THIRD TIME, he does something different than what we agreed upon. The filigree he added is not what I told him I wanted. It is ugly as hell & the lines are jagged as well as scarred! And on top of that, the entire piece was supposed to be underwater, but he tattooed waves on the bottom of the octopus. 6. When I got home, i realized what an awful job he had done on the octopus, and the fact that he took it upon himself to change my tattoo several times without consulting me. He tells me "I'm sad you're not going to let me finish." What! He agrees to give me a (very small) partial payment. Not only did we not complete the first half, but he changed a lot of things AND as the sessions went on, his work got worse & worse. After agreeing to a payment, he tells me to stop by the shop that weekend for my money back. i do, but he does not have my refund. He then proceeds to ignore me for over a month now. if pictures could be posted I would show the horrible evidence. Twice the time and money are going to be needed to fix this. The worst part is that he was careless with a tattoo that is permanently going to be on my body. Many changes are going to be needed to make them look better & in the end, regardless of how well my cover up turns out, it will still be something different than what i wanted originally. DO NOT GET A TATTOO DONE BY ACE @ Ace's high tattoos. Currently located on Commerce in Harlingen. (Google has not been updated, & the address is still listed as Sam Houston in San Benito) This man is a con artist, at best. read more