A woman in a white strapless gown holds a bouquet of yellow roses and succulents, with colourful neo-traditional portrait tattoos covering her upper arms and forearms.

Colourful portrait sleeve on upper arms

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The photograph is cropped from the neck to the thighs and shows a woman in a white strapless gown holding a bouquet of yellow roses, succulents and ferns. Both arms carry bold tattoos, including a woman's face framed by flowers and a red ribbon on the right arm, with heavy outlines and solid fills. The tattoos use yellow, red, teal and green inks, set against soft natural light and a blurred green background.

Neo-trad Upper arm Forearm Flower Ribbon Sleeve Succulent Rose

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had until the church bell at four to find enough greenery, and the orchard had given her nothing but wasps and windfalls. She went along the wall behind the Bramley rows, where the houseleeks grew in grey cushions between the stones, and pried three loose with a kitchen knife. Their roots came away with grit on them, and she wrapped each in a damp square of newspaper like something she had stolen.

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The bracken at the bottom of the field had gone the colour of old rope, but the fronds near the stream were still green enough, feathery and cool when she bent them. Her grandmother had always said you could make a bouquet out of anything if you were not too proud about it. The last yellow roses hung over the gate in the hedge, spotted with black, and Nell took the three least ruined and snipped the stems with her teeth because the scissors were in the car.

By half three she was standing on the lawn with a bundle that looked as if a hedge had been blown into her arms. Her sister Joan came round the side of the barn in her work boots, took one look, and laughed until she had to sit on the mounting block. 'Mum's ribbon,' she said at last, and pulled from her pocket the red satin that had once tied their mother's hat for every Sunday in 1968. Nell wound it round the stems, tied a knot that would not hold for long, and handed it back.

They walked up the lane together with the houseleeks bobbing against their hips, and the ribbon caught the late light the way it used to on the hat brim. Nobody at the church asked where the flowers came from. Later, when the cake was cut, Joan set the spare houseleek in a jam jar on the kitchen sill, where it sat for years and did not die.