Woman in a grey checked halter dress with a black ornamental tattoo on her upper left arm, shown in a close crop with her face out of frame.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dark ornamental tattoo on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A standing woman wears a fitted grey checked halter dress with a row of buttons down the front. A dark ornamental tattoo with curling, scroll-like linework sits on her upper arm and shoulder area. The image is a close crop from the chin to the thighs, with the tattoo and dress as the main focus against a plain indoor background.

Upper arm Ornament Scroll 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 pins are still in the hem when the generator coughs and the big top goes dark, and you are the only one who knows where the spare buttons are kept. Mrs Pargeter swore she cut the blue gingham halter in one evening, but the seams already know better. You spend the hour before the second house threading buttons through the placket by torchlight, counting them the way your mother counted stitches on the wash-day line.

Keep reading

Out past the dodgems, the showman is bawling numbers at the Ferris wheel, and its bulbs flicker across the caravan ceiling like a hand waving goodbye. Someone bangs on the door. It is Tomas, who has been at the shooting gallery since noon and smells of cordite and candy floss. He wants to know if the grey check will be ready for the ringmistress, who has been asking for it since Penzance. You tell him the curl of silver thread at the collar is the last thing, and that she can wait the length of one more scroll.

When the lights come back, the dress hangs on the rail with every button done up to the throat, each one sitting straight. The ringmistress steps into it without a word, turns once under the bulbs, and laughs as if you had told a joke nobody else in the field had heard. You fold the tape measure into your apron pocket. Tomorrow the fair rolls on to the next town, and the swirl stitched at the collar is the only thing in the wagon that still knows how to go round and round.