Ink and watercolour drawing of a fairy in a blue gown holding a bluebell stem, on a cream parchment background, shown as a botanical tattoo design.

Bluebell fairy design

Botanical · Colour · Flash

A small fairy with pinned-up dark hair and sheer wings leans against a tall stem of drooping bluebells, with a curling swirl at the base. The linework is fine and sketchy, with soft blue watercolour washes for the dress, wings and flowers. The design sits centred on a cream, mottled parchment background.

Botanical Fairy Flower Stem Wing Swirl

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

The bluebells in Harrowden Wood had not rung for three springs, and the tenants at Alder Gate blamed the new vicar's dog. Tamsin Pell knew better. She walked the ride every dawn with a knotted length of string, counting stems, and each morning there were fewer heads on the stalks, as if someone were taking them home one by one.

Keep reading

On the fourth dawn she found the fairy. It was no taller than a teaspoon, leaning its whole weight against the tallest stem in the wood. Its dress was the colour of a November sky and its wings were thin as frost on a window. The stem was bending toward the ground, and the bells were dropping into a shallow hollow where the earth was dark and damp.

"What are you doing?" Tamsin asked.

"Putting them to bed," said the fairy, without turning round. "Hush. The wood is tired of being looked at. Hold this end."

Tamsin held it. Together they laid the stems down one at a time, and each bell gave a small sound as it settled into the hollow, like a cup set on a saucer in another room. The fairy told her that the bells were the wood's memory of the wardens who had kept it, and that a memory left out in the open soon starts to wander. When the last stem lay still, the fairy pressed one blue bell into Tamsin's palm and folded her fingers over it.

That April the bluebells came up in Harrowden Wood, and every head turned the same way, toward the hollow. Tamsin walked the ride with her string and found it knotted at the end, with a single bell tied on in blue thread, still warm to the touch.