Realistic colour full sleeve tattoo of dahlias, a daffodil, a butterfly and a pink bird on a woman's upper arm, with a cursive script word near the elbow.

Full sleeve of realistic flowers and a butterfly

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A woman wears a white vest top while showing a full-arm colour tattoo. Realistic dahlias, a daffodil, a chrysanthemum and small blossoms sit among swirling teal and pink shading, with a butterfly and a pink bird near the top of the arm. A cursive script word is inked near the elbow, and the photo is taken against a plain light wall.

Realism Botanical Upper arm Forearm Flower Dahlia Daffodil Chrysanthemum Blossom Butterfly Bird Swirl Script

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

Dear Nell,

Keep reading

The gulls have followed us out past the Dogger for three days now, and Skipper says that means the weather will turn, which he says every trip. I have kept the envelope you pushed into my hand at the quay in my inside pocket, the one with the dahlia stamped on the flap, and I have not opened it since Grimsby. I know you think I am saving it for a dry day. It is only that the paper goes soft when it gets damp, and I don't want the spray to take your handwriting.

Something happened before dawn. A small brown butterfly came aboard, cold and stupid from the wet, and settled on the winch handle as if it had booked passage. Dunne wanted to flick it over the side. I held out my hand and it walked onto my wrist and stayed there all through the shooting of the net, which is more than the mate ever did for me.

Then a bird came, a pink thing with a tail like a torn ribbon, which had no business being forty miles from land. It perched on the mast crosstree and sang at the sea as though it was trying to talk it down. The lads went quiet. When we hauled the first catch, the cod came up silver and blue and gold, and for a moment the whole deck looked like your greenhouse in June.

The butterfly is still with me. It is riding in my collar, and I haven't the heart to tell it we're not home for a while yet. Tell Mum the daffodils can wait. I'll bring her something from the harbour wall, a sprig of sea pink, if I can keep it dry.

Love, Tom