Traditional style tattoo of a glass bottle holding a small red heart, with red and yellow flowers, dark green leaves and part of a swallow, on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bottle with heart and flowers on an arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A glass bottle with a small red heart inside is the central subject, tilted diagonally and surrounded by red and yellow flowers and dark teal leaves. Part of a swallow's wing sits at the bottom edge, and a partly visible chain-like shape appears on the right. The bold black outlines and flat, solid fills are typical of traditional American-style work, with a mix of red, orange, yellow, teal and grey ink on lightly toned skin.

Traditional Upper arm Bottle Heart Flower Leaves Swallow Chain

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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 lift in Harrow Court had been broken since spring, so Mrs Adebayo and I got into the habit of talking on the stairwell, with a rest on every landing between the fourth and the eleventh. She taught me to cork a bottle properly, with a dab of candle wax over the join so the damp couldn't get in. Her husband had written to her from Lagos every week for thirty-one years, and she kept the envelopes in a biscuit tin on top of the wardrobe. When she died in February, her daughter asked me to help clear the flat, and I was the one who found the tin was lighter than it should have been.

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Missing from the envelopes was a brown medicine bottle with a chipped lip, tucked at the back behind the bus passes. Inside it was a single sheet of blue airmail paper, folded small, with a red heart drawn in biro at the top. Her handwriting was careful and slanted. It wasn't addressed to anyone. It said the swallows had come back to the railway bridge that year, that the lemon tree on the balcony had flowered twice, and that she had stopped waiting for the post and started waiting for the light to change on the car park roof instead.

I didn't know what she wanted done with it, so I took it up to that roof on Sunday evening, where you can see the trains coming in under the bridge and the swifts dipping over the planters. Two swallows cut across the sky while I stood there. I pulled the wax off with my thumbnail, read the letter again, and wondered whether it was meant for her husband or for herself. Then I pushed the cork back in and dropped the bottle over the edge. It landed in the nasturtiums on the level below, glass intact, the heart still face up.