Small botanical tattoo of three shaded blue flowers with yellow centres and thin black vine swirls on the side of an ankle.

Blue flowers and vine swirls on an ankle

Botanical · Ankle · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows two five-petalled blue flowers with soft shading and pale highlights, each with a small yellow centre. Fine black vine lines with curling tendrils run up and around the flowers. The design is set against a light skin tone, with a black shoe strap and a sparkly anklet visible in the frame.

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You learn the island's names for things the summer you turn nine, because your aunt Morag will not let you call the blue flowers by the mainland word. Morning glory, the postcards say. Out here they are the lazy ones, she tells you, because they will not open until the sun has been up long enough to be bothered, and they fold themselves shut before the four o'clock boat comes round the point. You think this is nonsense until you find them spilling over the dyke behind the byre, five blue petals opening like a hand, a yellow coin pressed into the middle of each one.

Keep reading

The post comes on Tuesdays with Ruaraidh, who rows it across from Oban in a boat that smells of diesel and wet rope. Your father's envelope is thin again, and you know before you open it that it will say the same things in a different order. You fold it into your pocket and go round the back, where the vine has taken the dyke entirely. Its tendrils curl around the stones like someone trying to hold on to a sleeve. Morag says a vine will climb anything that stays still long enough, and you think a person ought to be warned about that.

So you stand still. You stand with your back to the stones while the tendrils catch your jumper and your hair, and you watch the sea go from silver to pewter as the flowers shut one by one, the way doors close in a house where someone has gone to bed. By the time Ruaraidh's engine coughs its way back round the point, you are caught fast in green wire and blue petals, and you have decided, for once, not to be the one who pulls free first.

Morag comes out with the lamp, unhooks you one tendril at a time, and says nothing at all, which on this island is the same as saying you did well.

More like this

Fine line infinity symbol tattoo with blue, white and green flowers on the inner forearm near the wrist.
Infinity symbol with flowers on a wrist
Black and grey botanical tattoo of a shaded flower with swirling vine linework running down the ankle and onto the top of the foot.
Flower and vine tattoo on an ankle
Black outlined swirl tattoo with pale green shading on the ankle, shown on light skin against a patterned towel.
Green and black swirl motif on ankle
Black and grey fine line tattoo of a chain of bubble-like beads wrapping the ankle and running across the top of a foot to a lotus flower and om symbol.
Bead chain anklet with lotus and om symbol
Small black fine line shamrock outline tattoo with a stem on the inner ankle, shown on pale skin.
Small shamrock outline on an ankle
Fine line black and grey dragonfly tattoo with teal accents and swirling scrollwork across the top of a foot, with glitter nail varnish on the toes.
Dragonfly and swirls on the top of a foot
Shaded blue rose with black vine swirls and a dangling beaded rosary ending in a cross, tattooed on the ankle.
Blue rose and rosary on an ankle
Close-up of a black scrollwork tattoo running across the top of a foot, with a small swirl on the second toe.
Black scroll tattoo across the top of a foot
Colour tattoo of three sunflowers in a row across the inner wrist, with yellow petals, brown centres and botanical shading.
Three sunflowers on a wrist
Colour tattoo of a leafy branch with two small birds and an orange butterfly across the top of a foot.
Branch with birds and butterfly on a foot
Tattoo of a purple butterfly with a black outline and black scrollwork swirls with dots on the side of a foot near the ankle.
Purple butterfly with swirls on the foot
Red plumeria flower with black tribal bands, swirling vines and a small cross tattooed across the top of a foot.
Plumeria and tribal band on the foot

From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.