Black line tattoo of a dreamcatcher with feathers and beads on the inner wrist of a raised hand with dark nail polish.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dreamcatcher tattoo on the wrist

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A raised hand with dark painted nails shows a small black dreamcatcher tattoo on the inner wrist. The design uses clean, even outlines for the hoop, a radiating web, three hanging feathers and a short beaded cord. The plain pale background keeps the focus on the ink.

Fine line Forearm Dreamcatcher Feather Bead Web Hoop

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 find the hoop in the hull of the Mary Ann, wedged behind the bilge pump where Tomasz left it the winter before he went to the mainland. The willow has gone grey and is lashed with waxed thread, and a wren's feather is still caught in the lowest loop. Nobody on Skerry will say whose it was. Your mother used to say the gulls hated it.

Keep reading

You take it home along the shore path in the rain, the hoop knocking against your hip. The web inside is tight and even, spokes drawn out from the centre like a wheel, and someone has threaded blue glass beads at the knots. Three feathers hang from the rim on short cords, and the third has been mended with a sliver of tin so it won't tear loose in a wind.

The ferry is due on Thursday. You spend two evenings at the kitchen table with a jar of rivets and a spool of linen, trying to copy the web without losing count. The first attempt sags. The second holds, and when you hang it in the window the light passes through and throws a pattern across the floor that shivers whenever the door opens.

On Thursday you give it to the lighthouse boy, who is leaving on the boat with his trunk and a cough. He asks what it catches. You tell him whatever comes in at night and can't find its way back out. He turns it over, frowning at the spokes, and asks which side is the front. You say there isn't one, and he holds it up to the sea as if he means to check.