Gold metallic temporary tattoos of a mandala on a bare back, with lace-style ornaments on the upper arm, forearm and hand, as a woman with curly hair turns away.

Gold metallic mandala and lace tattoos on back

Back · Colour · Photo

A person with curly hair is seen from behind, with their head turned away and hands crossed over the upper back. Gold metallic temporary tattoos include a large mandala on the shoulder blade, a lace-like ornament running along the forearm and a fine pattern across the hand and fingers. The composition is warm and close, with the gold designs standing out against the skin and a red strap at the lower edge of the frame.

Back Forearm Hand Upper arm Mandala Lace pattern Ornament Hand Armband

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

Nobody in Margate wanted lace on their arm until Mrs Pell brought gold foil back from the Lisbon fair in a tin that smelled of pine. My father cut the first stencils from a brass offcut, filing the petals so thin the lamplight came through them, and we sold the transfers by the dozen from the pier kiosk all summer.

Keep reading

The trick, he always said, was never the gold. Gold is cheap and forgiving. The trick was the spacing, the way a lace edge has to break before it reaches the wrist, or it looks like a bangle bought in a hurry. I spent most of one August on a single armband, sliding the transfer paper a hair at a time, until a girl from the chip shop asked if she could keep the pattern on her skin till Christmas.

He died the autumn the tin ran empty. I found the stencil case under the counter, the mandala still wrapped in its tissue, the brass worn bright at the centre where his thumb had rested for forty years. I dusted it off, cut one last sheet of foil and carried the box down to the sea wall.

At dusk I pressed the mandala onto the shoulder blade of a customer who had walked up from the harbour with the wind in her coat. She didn't ask the price. When she turned to look at the promenade lamps, the gold caught the light and held it, pale and exact, the way his work always did when the evening came in low.