For most of us, the thought of needles is enough to bring on a cold sweat, trembling hands and a sick feeling in our stomachs.

But imagine having 28 of them stuck through your skin in the same day, all in the name of art.

That was exactly what happened to Britain’s most pierced woman Elaine Davidson after she called one of her favourite piercing studios, Acero Arte, in Darlington, earlier this year.

“Normally we wouldn’t let someone have more than four done in three months” Tracey Peschke, Acero’s co-founder and senior piercer tells me. “But since Elaine is experienced we did 28 in one session.

“It took about half a day. We had to have a couple of breaks and it was tiring for both of us, but I did a new line of rings down her front and re-did the three big bars through her forehead.

“We had to start small and build up the intensity. The big bar through the middle of her head was the toughest. We really had to push to get that one through but we managed it!

“She only allows about four people in the UK pierce her so when I see her on TV and see my handiwork it’s a proud moment.”

Elaine and Tracey have both made a name for themselves in the world of body modification, though in very different ways. The former has an eye-watering 9,000 piercings, 1,000 of which are internal - including a cervix piercing - and makes her money travelling the world and appearing on television shows. The latter has a mere 30 piercings and makes her living putting them in other people, rather than herself.

“Though the first piercing I ever did was on myself” Tracey says. “I grew up around the time that punk was coming in. It was a big thing to be pierced back then and there were no piercers so I did it.”

“I pierced the side of my nose with a pin and had to leave for college every day with my hand over my face so my parents didn’t notice. Eventually my mum did see it and went ballistic.

“I claimed that a local jeweller had done it, but after she threatened legal action I confessed. Nothing was said about it after that.”

While teenage rebellion may have sparked an interest in body modification for Tracey, it wasn’t until many years later after graduating art college and becoming a mum that she turned to it as a career. Eventually she opened a shop with Dom Thompson, her heavily tattooed business partner, and after trouble with a couple of early employees, decided to get some professional training and do it herself.

Today she can count herself as one of the country’s experts as she recently she trained with Mac ‘Doctor Evil’ MacCarthy, a maverick experimenter in body modification, and learned how to insert shaped silicone moulds such as skulls and rings under the skin to create raised impressions on the surface.

“It is basically minor surgery. It involves making an incision with a scalpel and then suturing up a wound afterwards. We don’t do many because it’s a big commitment, it takes a long time to heal up and it won’t last forever.”

Tracey is now the only person in the North of England who is licensed to do it, but the ambitions don’t stop there.

“In the future we want to go into full scale body modification like branding, where you trace designs into skin with a cauterisation pen, and scarification, where you remove layers of skin with a scalpel in the shape of a tattoo before irritating the wound to create raised scar tissue.”

But while her expertise allows her to perform some truly toe-curling procedures, Tracey says her most treasured customers are the ones who come in with much simpler requests.

“The most important people who come in are the people who trust us to do their first piercing. They have come down this route and paid a professional to do it rather than using the gun.

“The piercing guns were originally designed for tagging cattle. You’re having a blunt instrument forced through your skin, which is more painful and creates a lot of swelling which can be dangerous if done on cartilage like noses and ears.

“The guns also can’t be cleaned properly so they’re just sprayed down between sessions if you’re lucky. A lot of the work we do here is repair work on piercings which get infected or aren’t done properly or are done on people who are too young. I think we’d all like to see them banned.”

It takes time and dedication to train to be a professional piercer. Adam Daniel, an apprentice at the shop, has been training part-time for a year and a half and has only just started practicing his trade. James Bowman, Tracey’s son, managed to get his training done in eight months but had to be at the shop every day.

He said: “It’s hard work for what you get paid but it’s not a job, it’s a career and a way of life. If you are right for it then it is going to be a lifelong career regardless of how much you get paid.

“It allows you to be yourself as well. I used to work in IT but I quit because of basic discrimination against the way I choose to look. Here it doesn’t matter.”

Self expression and passion are what binds the charming but slightly odd family of Acero Arte together, and it shows in their success. They welcome 3,500 people through the doors every year, most of which will have multiple piercings, making them the busiest shop in the north of England. They have a list of regular customers, including Elaine, who will travel some way for their specialist service.

Summing it up James added: “We wanted to provide a quality service in a town where there was none. I guess it just runs in our blood.”