Black ink mandala lace tattoo with hanging drops and diamond shapes on the thigh, partly covered by a dark skirt.

Lace mandala tattoo on the thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo covers the front of the thigh with a symmetrical mandala-style ornament, with scalloped lace-like bands at the top and a central heart-shaped motif. Fine dotwork stippling and thin lines build the pattern, with strings of diamonds and drops hanging down the leg. The design is rendered in black ink and grey tones against light skin, and the photograph is a close crop of the leg beneath a dark skirt.

Dotwork Geometric Thigh Mandala Lace Ornament Diamond Drop Heart

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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 bobbins are back on their hooks and the pattern is pinned flat on the board, so you can stop asking whether I am eating. Mrs Quill sent up a pie with the last coach, and I have eaten half of it standing at the window, watching the fishing boats come in low on their marks.

Keep reading

The commission is a border for a hem, scallops of fine thread fanning along the top like the shells the children collect below the slipway. Under them sits a heart, pointed at the base, worked so close that the light goes grey when you hold it to the lamp. From the heart hang strings of tiny diamonds and drops, each one knotted by hand, so the whole piece looks like a chandelier that has been lowered into the wrong room and left there to sway.

Father drew the original. You will remember the sheet, brown at the corners, with his pencil ticks where he meant the drops to fall. I had thought I would copy it without thinking, but on Tuesday I put the bobbin down, unpinned the lot, and found his ticks were not quite straight. He had fixed them by eye, the way he fixed nets. So I have followed his mistakes instead of my ruler, and the drops now fall a little unevenly, the way water runs down a window.

Mr Ashby says the customer will want the work finished before the spring tides. I shall send it by the carrier on Friday, folded in tissue, with the drops tucked into the fold so they do not catch. Tell Tom to keep the back door shut when the wind is in the north. The lace does not like draughts, and neither, I have decided, do I.